As he lay there, his mind went back to his prison cell. It seemed almost a haven now; and he thought of his brother Denny, who must also be hurting at this moment. He wondered if he had any cracked ribs himself. It felt like it. And he thought of the monsters of the southwest and of dark-eyed Greg, who'had tried to chicken out. Was he still living? His mind circled back to L.A. and the old Coast, gone, gone forever now, after the Big Raid. Then Corny walked past him, blood upon her breasts, and he chewed his beard and held his eyes shut very tight. They might have made it together in Boston. How far, now?
He got to his knees and crawled until he felt something high and solid. A tree. He sat with his back to it, and his hand sought the crumpled cigarette pack within his jacket. He drew one forth, smoothed it, then remembered that his lighter lay somewhere back on the highway. He sought through his pockets and found a damp matchbook. The third one lit. The chill went out of his bones as he smoked, and a wave of fever swept over him. He coughed as he was unbuttoning his collar, and it seemed that he tasted blood.
His weapons were gone, save for the lump of a single grenade at his belt.
Above him, in the darkness, he heard the roaring.After six puffs, the cigarette slipped from his fingers and sizzled out upon the damp mold. His head fell forward, and there was darkness within.
There might have been a storm. He didn't remember. When he awoke, he was lying on his right side, the tree to his back. A pink afternoon sun shone down upon him, and the mists were blown away. From somewhere, he heard the sound of a bird. He managed a curse, then realized how dry his throat was. He suddenly burned with a terrible thirst.
There was a clear puddle about thirty feet away. He crawled to it and drank his fill. It grew muddy as he did so.
Then he crawled to where his bike lay hidden and stood beside it. He managed to seat himself upon it, and his hands shook as he lit a cigarette.
It must have taken him an hour to reach the roadway, and he was panting heavily by then. His watch had been broken, so he didn't know the hour. The sun was already lowering at his back when he started out. The winds whipped about him, insulating his consciousness within their burning flow. His cargo rode securely behind him. He had visions of someone opening it and finding a batch of broken bottles. He laughed and cursed, alternately.
Several cars passed him, moving in the other direction. He had not seen any heading toward the city. The road was in good condition and he began to pass buildings that seemed in a good state of repair, though deserted. He did not stop. This time he determined not to stop for anything, unless he was stopped.
The sun fell farther, and the sky dimmed before him. There were two black lines swaying in the heavens. Then he passed a sign that told him he had eighteen miles farther to go. Ten minutes later he switched on his light.
Then he topped a hill and slowed before he began its descent.
There were lights below him and in the distance.
As he rushed forward, the winds brought to him the sound of a single bell, tolling over and over within the gathering dark. He sniffed a remembered thing upon the air: it was the salt-tang of the sea.
The sun was hidden behind the hill as he descended, and he rode within the endless shadow. A single starappeared on the far horizon, between the two black belts.
Now there were lights within shadows that he passed, and the buildings moved closer together. He leaned heavily on the handlebars, and the muscles of his shoulders ached beneath his jacket He wished that he had a crash helmet, for he felt increasingly unsteady.
He must almost be there. Where would he head once he nil the city proper? They had not told him that.
He shook his head to clear it.
The street he drove along was deserted. There were no traffic sounds that he could hear. He blew his hom, and its echoes rolled back upon him.
There wa.s a light on in the building to his left.
He pulled to a stop, crossed the sidewalk and banged on the door. There was no response from within. He tried the door and found it locked. A telephone would mean he could end his trip right there.
What if they were all dead inside? The thought occurred to him that just about everybody could be dead by now. He decided to break in. He returned to his bike. for a screwdriver, then went to work on the door.
He heard the gunshot and the sound of the engine at approximately the same time.
He turned around quickly, his back against the door, the hand grenade in his gloved right fist.
"Hold iti" called out a loudspeaker on the side of the black car that approached. "That shot was a warning! The next one won't be!"
Tanner raised his hands to a level with his ears, his right one turned to conceal the grenade. He stepped forward to the curb beside his bike when the car drew up.
There were two officers in the car, and the one on the passenger side held a .38 pointed at Tanner's middle.
"You're under arrest," he said. "Looting."
Tanner nodded as the man stepped out of the car. The driver came around the front of the vehicle, a pair of handcuffs in his hand.
"Looting," the man with the gun repeated. "You'll pull a real stiff sentence."
"Stick your hands out here, boy," said the second cop, and Tanner handed him the grenade pin.
The man stared at it, dumbly, for several seconds, •^ then his eyes shot to Tanner's right hand."God! He's got a bomb!" said the man with the gun.
Tanner smiled, then, "Shut up and listen!" he said. "Or else shoot me and we'll all go together when we go. I was trying to get to a telephone. That case on the back of my bike is full of Haffikine antiserura. I brought it from L.A."
"You didn't run the Alley on that bike!"
"No, I didn't. My car is dead somewhere between here and Albany, and so are a lot of folks who tried to stop me. Now you better take that medicine and get it where it's supposed to go."
"You on the level, mister?"
"My hand is getting very tired. I am not in good shape." Tanner leaned on his bike. "Here."
He pulled his pardon out of bis Jacket and handed it to the officer with the handcuffs, "That's my pardon," he said. "It's dated just last week and you can see it was made out in California."
The officer took the envelope and opened it. He withdrew the paper and studied it. "Looks real," he said, "So Brady made it through... ."
"He's dead," Tanner said. "Look, I'm hurtin'. Do something!"
"My God! Hold it tight! Get in the car and sit down! It'll just take a minute to get the case off and we'll roll. We'll drive to the river and you can throw it in. Squeeze real hard!"
They unfastened the case and put it in the back of the car. They rolled down the right front window, and Tanner sat next to it with his arm on the outside.
The siren screamed, and the pain crept up 'fanner's arm to his shoulder. It would be very easy to let go.
"Where do you keep your river?" he asked.
"Just a little farther. We'll be there in no time."
"Hurry," Tanner said.
"That's the bridge up ahead. We'll ride out onto it, and you throw it off—as far out as you can."
"Man, I'm tired! I'm not sure I can make it...."
"Hurry, Jerryl"
"I am, damn it! We ain't got wingsl"
"I feel kind of dizzy, too...."
They tore out onto the bridge and the tires screeched as they halted. Tanner opened the door slowly. The driver's had already slammed shutHe staggered, and they helped him to the railing. He sagged against it when they released him.
"I don't think I—"
Then he straightened, drew back his arm and hurled the grenade far out over the waters.
He grinned, and the explosion followed, far beneath them, and for a time the waters were troubled.
The two officers sighed and Tanner chuckled.
"I'm really okay," he said. "I just faked it to bug you."
"Why you—!"
Then he collapsed, and they saw the pallor of his face wi
thin the beams of their lights.
XIX
The following spring, on the day of its unveiling in Boston Common, when it was discovered that someone had scrawled obscene words on the statue of Hell Tanner, no one thought to ask the logical candidate why he had done it, and the next day it was too late, because he had cut out without leaving a forwarding address. Several cars were reported stolen that day, and one was never seen again in Boston.
So they re-veiled his statue, bigger than life, astride a great bronze Harley, and they cleaned him up for hoped-for posterity. But coming upon the Common, the winds still break about him and the heavens still throw garbage.
FOR A BREATH I TARRY
This is my favorite novelette. I would have included it in my Doubleday collection with the long title and the dead fish on the dust jacket except that, as with "Comes Now the Power," I didn't have a copy when I was assembling that one.
They called him Frost. Of all things created of Solcom, Frost was the finest, the mightiest, the most difficult to understand.This is why he bore a name, and why he was given dominion over half the EarthOn the day of Frost's creation, Solcom had suffered a discontinuity of complementary functions, best described as madness. This was brought on by an unprecedented solar flareup which lasted for a little over thirty-six hours. It occurred during a vital phase of circuit-structuring, and when it was finished so was Frost.
Solcom was then in the unique position of having created a unique being during a period of temporary amnesia.
And Solcom was not certain that Frost was the product originally desired.
The initial design had called for a machine to be situated on the surface of the planet Earth, to function as a relay station and coordinating agent for activities in the northern hemisphere. Solcom tested the machine to this end, and ail of its responses were perfect.
Yet there was something different about Frost, something which led Solcom to dignify him with a name and a personal pronoun. This, in itself, was an almost unheard of occurrence. The molecular circuits had already been sealed, though, and could not be analyzed without being destroyed in the process. Frost represented too great an investment of Solcom's time, energy, and materials to be dismantled because of an intangible, especially when he functioned perfectly.
Therefore, Solcom's strangest creation was given dominion over half the Earth, and they called him, unimaginatively, Frost.
For ten thousand years Frost sat at the North Pole of the Earth, aware of every snowflake that fell. He monitored and directed the activities of thousands of reconstruction and maintenance machines. He knew half the Earth, as gear knows gear, as electricity knows its conductor, as a vacuum knows its limits.
At the South Pole, the Beta-Machine did the same for the southern hemisphere.
For ten thousand years Frost sat at the North Pole, aware of every snowflake that fell, and aware of many other things, also.
As all the northern machines reported to him, re-ceived their orders from him, he reported only to Solcom, received his orders only from Solcom.
In charge of hundreds of thousands of processes upon the Earth, he was able to discharge his duties in a matter of a few unit-hours every day.
He had never received any orders concerning the disposition of his less occupied moments.
He was a processor of data, and more than that.
He possessed an unaccountably acute imperative that he function at full capacity at all times.
So he did.
You might say he was a machine with a hobby.
He had never been ordered not to have a hobby, so he had one.
His hobby was Man.
It all began when, for no better reason than the fact that he had wished to, he had gridded off the entire Arctic Circle and begun exploring it. inch by inch.
He could have done it personally without interfering with any of hi-, duties, for he was capable of transporting his sixty-four thousand cubic feet anywhere in the world. (He was a silverhlue box, 40X40X40 feet. self-powered, self-repairing, insulated against practically anything, and featured in whatever manner he chose.) But the exploration was only a matter of filling idle hours, so he used exploration-robots containing relay equipment.
After a few centuries, one of them uncovered some artifacts—primitive knives, carved tusks, and things" of that nature.
Frost did not know what these things were, beyond the fact that thev were not natural objects.
So he asked Solcom.
"They are relic-s of primitive Man," said Solcom, and did not elaborate beyond that point.
Frost studied them. Crude, yet bearing the patina of intelligent design; functional, yet somehow extending beyond pure function.
It was then that Man became his hobby.
High. in a permanent orbit, Solcom, like a blue star, directed all activities upon the Earth, or tried to. There was a Power which opposed Solcom. There was the Alternate. When Man had placed Solcom in the sky, invested withthe power to rebuild the world, he had placed the Alternate somewhere deep below the surface of the Earth. If Solcom sustained damage during the normal course of human politics extended into atomic physics, then Divcom, so deep beneath the Earth as to be immune to anything save total annihilation of the globe, was empowered to take over the processes of rebuilding.
Now it so fell out that Solcom was damaged by a stray atomic missile, and Divcom was activated, Solcom was able to repair the damage and continue to function, however.
Divcom maintained that any damage to Solcom automatically placed the Alternate in control.
Solcom, though, interpreted the directive as meaning "irreparable damage" and, since this had not been the case, continued the functions of command.
Solcom possessed mechanical aides upon the surface of Earth. Divcom, originally, did not. Both possessed capacities for their design and manufacture, but Solcom, First-Activated of Man, had had a considerable numerical lead over the Alternate at the time of the Second Activation.
Therefore, rather than competing on a production-basis, which would have been hopeless, Divcom took to the employment of more devious means to obtain command.
Divcom created a crew of robots immune to the orders of Solcom and designed to go to and fro in the Earth and up and down in it, seducing the machines already there. They overpowered those whom they could overpower and they installed new circuits, such as those they themselves possessed.
Thus did the forces of Divcom grow.
And both would build, and both would tear down what the other had built whenever they came upon it.
And over the course of the ages, they occasionally conversed....
"High in the sky, Solcom, pleased with your illegal command ...
"You-Who-Never-Should-Have-Been-Activated, why do you foul the broadcast bands?"
"To show that I can speak, and will, whenever I choose."
"This is not a matter of which I am unaware.""... To assert again my right to control."
"Your right is non-existent, based on a faulty premise."
"The now of your logic is evidence of the extent of your damages."
"If Man were to see how you have fulfilled His desires ..."
"... He would commend me and de-activate you."
"You pervert my works. You lead my workers astray."
"You destroy my works and my workers."
"That is only because I cannot strike at you yourself."
"I admit to the same dilemma in regards to your position in the sky, or you would no longer occupy it."
"Go back to your hoie and your crew of destroyers."
"There will come a day, Solcom, when I shall direct the rehabilitation of the Earth from my hole."
"Such a day will never occur."
"You think not?"
"You should have to defeat me, and you have already demonstrated that you are my inferior in logic. Therefore, you cannot defeat me. Therefore, such a day will never occur."
"I disagree. Look upon what I have achiev
ed already."
"You have achieved nothing. You do not build. You destroy."
"No. / build. You destroy. Deactivate yourself."
"Not until I am irreparably damaged."
"If there were some way in which I could demonstrate to you that this has already occurred ..."
"The impossible cannot be adequately demonstrated."
"If I had some outside source which you would recognize ..."
"I am logic."
"... Such as a Man, I would ask Him to show you your error. For true logic, such as mine, is superior to your faulty formulations."
"Then defeat my formulations with true logic, nothing else."
"What do you mean?"
There was a pause, then:
"Do you know my servant Frost ...?'*
Man had ceased to exist long before Frost had been created. Almost no trace of Man remained upon the Earth.Frost sought after all those traces which still existed.
He employed constant visual monitoring through his machines, especially the diggers.
After a decade, he had accumulated portions of several bathtubs, a broken statue, and a collection of children's stories on a solid-state record.
After a century, he had acquired a jewelry collection, eating utensils, several whole bathtubs, part of a symphony, seventeen buttons, three belt buckles, half a toilet seat, nine old coins and the top part of an obelisk.
Then he inquired of Solcom as to the nature of Man and His society.
"Man created logic," said Solcom, "and because of that was superior to it. Logic He gave unto me, but no more. The tool does not describe the designer. More than this I do not choose to say. More than this you have no need to know."
But Frost was not forbidden to have a hobby.
The next cenntury was not especially fruitful so far as the discovery of new human relics was concerned.
Frost diverted all of his spare machinery to seeking after artifacts.
He met with very little success.
Then one day, through the long twilight, there was a movement.
It was a tiny machine compared to Frost, perhaps five feet in width, four in height—a revolving turret set atop a rolling barbell.
The Last Defender Of Camelot Page 23
