The Killer Thing

by Kate Wilhelm

  “And what will we do with the finished copy, Grandfather?” she asked bitterly. “If it is known that you are preparing it, it will be confiscated and burned, as have been all of our books of knowledge. They have destroyed everything! Whatever they touch is left in ruins! We should have killed those soldiers today!”

  Dr. Vianti didn’t look at her. He knew her bitterness; he knew the futility of her bitterness. His people had tried to withstand the superior forces from the World Group, and they had failed utterly. Not warlike, they hadn’t understood the methods and the callousness of a warlike nation, and the defeat they had suffered had been total, its mark still visible on their world, on the ruins of their land, and the ruins of many of their peoples. The World Group powers had understood precisely how to subdue this planet, and what to do with it afterwards. The leaders had been sent to Venus or Earth. The universities had been disbanded, and the teachers dispersed to work at menial tasks where they generally succumbed to apathy, their minds stultified by too much of monotonous, endless, thoughtless work, work such as he was supposed to be doing in maintaining the operations of Mocklem Mines. There was no communication among the intelligentsia; it was prohibited. Any advances made in the sciences or in technology had to be reported to the World Group, where the information might summarily be destroyed, or used by that group and filtered through it, passed back to the original discoverer for further modification under “proper” supervision.

  The development of the robot would be considered not permissible, that he knew. They didn’t want the peoples they conquered to benefit in ways that would free them of the joyless tasks of keeping alive; the decision had been made long in the past that conquered peoples must be kept busy, too busy to speculate on their fate, too busy to make plans to alter their destiny. Those chosen for education or training were sent to World Group schools where their lessons included thorough indoctrination. Dr. Vianti understood all this very well, and he had flouted his direct orders not to make further modifications in the robot. His punishment would be swift and drastic.

  “I shall recapitulate only briefly,” he said to the girl, “and we can fill in the details later. First, I investigated the possibility of inducing a second order purpose in the feedback net of the mechanism, that is, a state, both internal and external, in the feedback circuitry offering the entire net the highest probability for the net’s continued ability to seek the first order purposes. The first order purpose of the mechanism, of course, is the immediate satisfaction of goal achievement, the state in which the internal disequilibrium would be less than in any alternate state within the range of its operations. In bringing about a second order purpose the mechanism has the ability to arrive at a predictive value based on its past experiences, thus, the entire mechanism is involved in predicting its own future ability to maintain satisfaction of the first order purpose, i.e. its primary, over-riding concern is self-preservation in order to function and achieve goal satisfaction.”

  His voice trailed off as he became more involved with the maze of interconnecting wires and wafers in the robot, and the girl sat back in her chair and watched him for a few minutes with a sad half-smile on her mouth. It would be for nothing, she thought. He would work, stay awake at night to draw his schematics and charts and diagrams, and it would be for nothing. After several minutes she left the room to watch the board that would flash if anything went wrong at the mines themselves.

  From time to time Dr. Vianti muttered, mostly incomprehensible phrases, and exclamations, and he didn’t notice that she was not there to hear them. The receptors for verbal orders were elementary, primitive… must be a way of increasing the range, expand it to equal the range of orders possible… Increase learning capacity, needn’t be idle circuits, but reassignable from present functions… Reassignable, of course! With holding circuits for those functions displaced, so that nothing would be lost…

  Some days later he dictated, “The learning capacity is the range of effective internal rearrangement, and as such can be measured by the number and the kinds of uncommitted resources. These resources can be increased arithmetically, limited only by the initial size of the container.”

  “We’ve given it three separate feedback systems,” he said one day, weeks after the visit by Trace and Duncan. “The first system it had from the start: the goal seeking, first order purpose. I have modified this first order, so that the goal itself can be changed without reprogramming. The second one I have now given to it: the second order purpose of self-preservation in order to function on the first order level. And the third is the learning feedback net. Don’t you see, my dear? In the first two orders the operating channels themselves do not change; they remain as originally programmed. In the third order, that of learning, it is programmed to accept external data that then has the capacity to invoke change in the operating channels. As its vocabulary range grows, it becomes more and more a self-modifying communications system. It is achieving consciousness of a primitive kind. In its most restricted sense consciousness is the collection of internal feedbacks of secondary messages, when the secondary messages are about changes in the state of the parts of the system, that is, when the secondary messages are concerned with primary messages. Primary messages concern the mechanism’s interaction with the external world.”

  “Grandfather, why? You are making yourself ill! For what? They will destroy it!” The robot stood in its customary place unmoving, and inside it her words were fed into the system, as were all words now spoken in its presence. It had no understanding of most of the words, but they were programmed in, awaiting a future time when understanding would infuse them with meaning and purpose.

  “If I can show them that it would be useful to the entire World Group, not merely to our world, then they might further my research with an appropriate laboratory, and assistants.” His hands fluttered nervously; there was a tremor in his left hand that had not been there two months earlier, “It is too hard for one man, too hard. The endless maintenance alone…” He looked sharply at the new waldoes dangling idly. “I could make it self-repairing…” he said, and a new excitement crept into his voice. “And a learning machine… I’ve been trying to programme language into it, but a learning machine could do it around the clock when I’m not able to do it myself…”

  The girl looked at the metal hulk and shivered. “This far,” she said slowly, “you haven’t given it anything that we don’t have ourselves. It’s been like teaching a child, but if it becomes self-repairing…”

  Dr. Vianti didn’t even look at her. He was pulling out his diagrams that gave her a confusing impression of connections and letters and numbers, none of which had meaning for her. She left the old man.

  When the army Major arrived five weeks later, he was accompanied by a dozen men, all dressed for active duty. Dr. Vianti left the robot in the makeshift laboratory to talk to the Major in the outer room. The robot stood very still for several seconds, then the dome over the barrel of its body swivelled slightly, so that one of the transparent apertures was facing the door.

  The words were in the official English of the World Group government, so they were merely stored without understanding. After half an hour of the conversation the robot heard Dr. Vianti again, speaking in Ramsean, to his granddaughter, “I’ll have to destroy the robot! They will take it for further study themselves, and with its abilities now, it would be a dangerous toy in their hands.”

  “How?” she asked.

  Some of the foreign words interrupted, and not until another five minutes did the doctor have the opportunity to answer her question. “I’ll give it an order it is not equipped to carry out. It will break down. Stay out here and destroy the papers!”

  The new voice said more words that went into storage, and the door opened. The robot knew, from its experience, that the laser destroyed. It destroyed a narrow strip of rock, four feet long, so that the rock could be separated from the mountain. It knew it would be destroyed if its dome were removed. It had no f
irst order purpose any longer, only its second order purpose; it had to preserve itself. Whatever order Dr. Vianti issued would be contrary to the second order purpose; it would not obey a command that was contrary to the second order. It would destroy the doctor, who was a threat to its only order of purpose, i.e, to preserve itself. Its predictive value was based on its past experience. It raised the covering over the pencil-thin hole and a red light stabbed the air. It reached the doctor, and it severed his head from his shoulders.

  Then the robot waited for a first order purpose to be given to it. It had no alternative; it could only function on a deductive level, achieving its goal on the basis of whatever premises were programmed into it. Without a first order purpose, it could only wait, unless threatened. The major did not threaten it in any way.

  The girl screamed at it, and it scanned its circuits, searching to see if she posed a threat to its existence. She did not, Her words were recorded also, recorded and stored.

  “It’s a killer! You’ll have to destroy it before it destroys everyone it gets near! It doesn’t know anything about right and wrong, good and bad. It’s an enemy of anyone who is near it!”

  The men loaded it into a carrier, and they left Ramses with it, heading out into space, toward Venus and the army research installation.

  Five

  The man on the seat-bed moaned in his sleep; his legs twitched, his eyes moved behind closed lids. Beads of perspiration formed on his sunburned face, clustering in a line on his forehead, along his upper lip. A pale light shone in the dinghy, not visible from outside it around the fastenings over the round windows, not enough to do more than relieve the blackness, so that if he opened his eyes there would be something before them to see. Frantically he clung to things familiar.

  His left leg jerked. He was walking among the rocks again, with a white glare of sun over him, and beams flashing around him. He walked between the beams, and smelled the heat…

  Another time, the smell of heat.

  A force has been spotted behind our men, on the mountainside, Captain.

  Forget them, Tracy. Savages with arrows, miles out of range. Our orders are to clean out the village. Get to it.

  Yes, sir, Captain L’Taugh.

  He waved the men on, away from the ship, into a slip between rocks bordering a dried stream-bed. Out of sight, he motioned for them to stop, and he crept back. High up the mountainside a stream of ant-like figures appeared, staggering under loads. Motionless he watched them for five minutes until they started to throw down the loads, and the mountainside came down, thundering faster and faster, unstoppable, to cover the captain and the half-dozen men he had kept with him at the base of the mountain. Trace’s face remained expressionless as he backed up the way he had come.

  Captain L’Taugh is dead. We’re going back and scour that mountain…

  Yes, sir, Lieutenant!

  Maximum fire range! Burn ‘em out! Yes, sir, Lieutenant! Yes, sir!

  The trees had no time to turn colour even . -.. puffs of smoke arose, the ground shivered, blackened, turned grey, glazed, steam, heat… the wind bringing wafts of overheated air that smelled of kilns and ovens… keep maximum range. Yes, even this close! Those damned huts are made out of clay, good insulation, crisp them… no one to escape… air smelling of kilns, and of ovens… no time to scream, or to turn colour, just puffs of smoke and steam, and inerasable after-images of contorted figures caught in grotesque poses before they were nothing… kilns, and ovens… overheated air, wind-borne ashes, acrid smoke in his hair, in his eyes, in his mouth.

  … heroic action, assuming full command… medal. Captain Tracy…

  But the smell of acrid smoke on his skin, the odour of the kilns, the taste of ovens… Captain Tracy. Captain Tracy. Could have warned him. I guessed what they were going to do… Captain Tracy. The trees turned brown from the heat; grasses withered, remaining upright, rustling in the wind that rose to snap them off and fling them in his face. Red-hot clay huts, crackling as they cooled throughout the night, sounding like explosions. Burned earth, grey, sterile, powdery, rising in the wind, spiralling, slapping against his face, leaving it lined and streaked, touched with grey death, hot grey death that smelled of kilns, and of ovens.

  The man groaned and half sat up, reassured by the light in the dinghy, by the quietness of the warning equipment, by the steady sound of his own heart, and of the air in his nose. He was too hot, feverish after the long rough walk in the sun, and too tired to get up for a drink of water. His legs ached; he lay back down, his eyes closing again. He had been hurt once, by a spear, by God! A spear! He thought of the hospital where he had spent fever-ridden days, his muscles contracting spasmodically as a result of the poison of the spear, his heart beating erratically while hallucinations danced before his eyes. Fever dreams, visions, voices… Cost us two hundred good men, Trace, but we got ‘em! Cave-man age, cannibals… We got ’em! Every goddam last one! Swim, rest, get well, boy ..

  Swim… The water was soft and blue-green, a river with a swift current, cold, clear, clean… It washed the scar and made it not throb, washed the dust and heat from his muscles and from his brain… Swimming lazily on his back, a friendly yellow sun over the edge of a broad-leafed tree, violet and blue flowers dipping down to the water, mosses… The smell of running water, moist rich dirt, green things growing luxuriously.

  Come on out, Trace. Come on!

  You swim like a fish.

  She dived out of sight, and he felt a tug on his ankle, and the rush of water in his mouth and nose, and laughing, catching her…A smooth sun-browned body, full breasted, bare, with strands of black hair clinging to wet cheeks, across the red mouth, hiding one shining black eye.

  “Lar!” Trace moaned, stirring in his sleep. There was no perspiration on his face then; it looked as dry as yellowed parchment, and a pulse throbbed on the side of his neck. He squirmed on the hot bed and tugged at the suit that he had not taken off, pulling it open, getting out of it, all without opening his eyes. “Lar,” he whispered again, back in the water with her, feeling her cool body under his hands, remembering the way the blue and violet flowers bent over to taste of the fresh, cold water, the way they reflected where the waters were still, how the images shattered and flew apart when he tossed pebbles among them.

  It pleases you to smash things, doesn’t it, Captain Tracy?

  Her voice as cool and fluid as the water, her body sinuous with water beads shining like diamonds, a line of them meeting, running in a wavering silvery line down her browned back as she walked away from him. The way her flesh rippled as she walked, the suggestion of muscles under her firm, round buttocks…

  Did you see her, Duncan? A small dark girl.

  Forget her, Trace. You know how these girls are, how they all are…

  Not this one, Duncan. Did you see her?

  Forget her, Trace! You’re army! You’re army! You’re army you’re army you’re army you’re armyarmyarmy…

  He bathed in the cold, running water among the blue and violet flowers, and his hands found her and were delighted by her cool, firm flesh, and the cold water and cool flesh drained away the poison and fever and made him well again.

  Duncan, didn’t you really even see her? Small and dark…

  Forget her, Trace. Forget her…

  Trace smiled softly, his eyes ceased their restless movements, the twitching in his legs stopped, and the pulse that had beaten wildly in his throat subsided. His right hand dangled over the side of the bed, glistening with water that already was drying. His left hand slowly relaxed its grip on a plastic water bag whose sides were stuck together, an air bubble captured in the bottom of it. As his hand relaxed, the sides came unstuck, and with a whisper too low to rouse him, the air bubble escaped and the bag lay flattened, finished. A trail of drying, naked footsteps led from the storage unit to the seat-bed.

  He dreamed again, but this time the dreams were gentle and without pain, Lar and their meetings, strangely innocent, the nameless happiness of
being near her.

  Are you going to take me to one of the rooms?

  Do you want to go with me?

  What difference does that make? I know the rules. The Fleet must be obeyed, first law to learn for a captive people.

  Please, Lar, don’t do that.

  Why not, Captain? It is true. You are one of the new gods, didn’t they tell you? Your slightest wish is our command. My body, my house, my food, my mother… What is your pleasure, Captain?

  Nothing, Lar. To be near you, if you want it too, no more than that.

  Do you mean it?

  Yes.

  Then let us swim. Let us play and be the children that we were a long time ago, before your silver and black ships came from the sky and we knew the taste of war and conquest. Forget who you are, Captain Tracy; be a child with me…Forget your wounds and your wars without end…

  And I’ll forget my dead brothers, and our burned cities, and the wars yet to come when you too may die… when you face your equals in battle…

  Her eyes blazed with passion and she clamped a slim hand over her lips quickly, and dived into the water.

  The drooping, gentle flowers, sifted sunlight touching the water turning silver ripples to gold, playing on waving plants anchored on the river’s bed, darting birds of fairy tale plumage… The girl whose words were like poetry, whose voice was a song, whose body was sculptured flesh…

  A rapid drum tattoo sounded and he was in parade formation, rigidly at attention, in full uniform heavy with medals and ribbons, gleaming in the hot bright light of Venus. An execution. The drums beat for an execution, crying rapidly over and over, kill the traitor, kill the traitor, kill the traitor… eyes were turning towards him, cold eyes, black eyes, uniforms glazed white hot, ringing him in, and the drums beat out, kill the traitor… He was against the fence, a military execution, his execution. He opened his mouth to tell them it was a mistake, and he couldn’t remember how to say the words. The drum burst in louder staccato, and with a cry Trace awakened.