I should also like to add, for those who may read “An Adventure,” that excellent color photographs of the park at Versailles, and of the grounds of the Trianon, can be seen in the National Geographic Magazine for January, 1925. There clings to these scenes, it seems to me, an aura of strangeness, a shadowy suggestion of something beyond.
But that, I am sure, is because I had just read this amazing book, “the record,” in the words of Edith Olivier, “of an unexplained extension of the limits of human experience—”
ROBOT’S RETURN
Robert Moore Williams
Unhappy victim of disease, environmental changes and his own folly, man may some day perish from the earth. But those who depart always leave something of themselves behind. Then the question is: who will inherit from man? A being of his own devising? Granted these premises, we face the inexorable corollary, will the heirs want their inheritance?
* * *
AS THOUGH sustained by the strength of a dream, the ship floated gracefully, easily, a bare hundred feet above the surface of the planet. Overhead, slightly more than ninety million miles away, a sullen sun retreated down the dark blue sky. Its long rays fretted across the planet, washed from the low, brown hills, glinted from the jumbled mounds in the center of the valley.
The ship turned, slanted down toward the mounds, rose over them, circled, found a spot where the litter was nearly level and snuggled down to rest as though returning home after weary years spent between the stars.
Hissing from the pressure of air rushing inward, a forward lock opened.
Nine stood in the lock, staring from never-blinking eyes across the landscape—a fixed, somber gaze. Hungrily, his eyes pried among the jumbled masonry, the great blocks of white stone stained a dirty brown in places, the piles of red clay in which grass was reluctantly growing. Five, perhaps ten miles around, the piles circled, then gradually leveled off toward the low brown hills.
Behind him a voice whispered, asking a question.
“It is the same as all the others,” his answer went, though the grim line of the mouth did not move. “Silence, and the wreckage of a mighty city. But nothing lives here now. The inhabitants are gone.”
For a second there was silence, and then a third voice whispered. “Just as I said. We are only wasting time here. It is true that once some kind of a race lived on this planet—but certainly they were never intelligent enough to have been our ancestors.”
Nine, in the lock, sighed softly. “Seven, you must remember that we have not made a complete investigation. You must also remember that we have absolutely no knowledge of our ancestors—even as to whether or not they actually existed. Our records are complete for eight thousand years, but they do not go back beyond the time when the Original Five awaked, finding themselves lying on the edge of the sea, with no knowledge of how they came to be there. Perhaps they were a special creation, for they possessed great intelligence, speedily adapting the planet to their needs, forging and constructing others to help them. Perhaps they had come there, in a ship that had sunk in the sea, from some other planet. But we have never been able to solve the problem.”
Eight, silent after his first question, pressed forward, stared over Nine’s shoulder.
“I am perfectly familiar with the history of our race.” The edge of Seven’s thinking was clear over the radio beam. “The point I make is that the little life we have seen on this planet—and little enough we have seen—has been organic, a mess of chemicals. Animals, eating each other, eating grass— Pah! I want no ancestors like that.”
Slowly, Eight shook his head, the ripple of interwoven metal strands winking in the light. As if he had not heard the bickering of Seven and Nine he spoke. “For a minute, as I stood here, it seemed to me that I had been on this spot before. The low hills circling a city— Only the city has changed, and over there”—he pointed toward the east— “it seems there should be a lake, or an inlet from the ocean. But no—no—I must be mistaken.” He paused, and the fixed gleam in his eyes held a touch of awe. “I spoke—I used the vocal apparatus— Now I wonder why I did that?”
“So do I,” Seven’s answer rasped. “You used the vocal apparatus when the radio beam is much better. I have never understood why we should equip ourselves with cumbersome apparatus for making and hearing sounds when we have a much better method of communication.”
“Because,” Eight answered. “Because we have always had them. The Original Five had them. I do not know why they had them, for they also had the radio beam. Perhaps they had a use for them, though what that use could have been— At any rate, we have retained them. Perhaps, some day, we will discover a use for them.”
“Bah!” Seven snorted. “You are one of those inexplicable dreamers. It seems that no matter how carefully we construct the brain substance, we always get a few freaks who are unwilling to face reality, who are not sufficient in themselves, but who hunger for some day that is past—a day that never had existence. I have no sympathy with you, nor any sympathy with the Council that sent us here on this wild exploration.”
“But,” Nine protested, “the Council could not ignore the evidence of the old star map. The Original Five had that map, but we have never understood it, probably never would have understood it if our newly perfected telescopes had not revealed this system to us—nine planets circling a sun, the third planet a strange double system. Obviously that map is somehow a link with our unknown past.”
“Nonsense. I am a realist. I face the future, not the past.”
“But the future is built of material taken from the past, and how can we build securely when we do not know what our past has been? It is important to us to know whether we are descended from whatever gods there are, or whether we have evolved from some lower form. Come,” Nine spoke.
The cunningly twisted strands of metal writhed and Nine stepped lithely from the lock. Eight followed, and after them came Seven, still grumbling.
Three little metal men four and a half feet tall. Two legs, two arms, two eyes, a nose, a mouth—the last two organs almost valueless survivals. For they did not need food or oxygen. The power of the bursting atom supplied them with energy. Nor did they really need the legs, for their evolution during their eight thousand years had been rapid. Seven touched the ground, glowed slightly, rose into the air and drifted after his companions. Eight and Nine used their legs. Somehow, to Eight the feel of the ground was good.
They stood on a little hill. Eight’s eyes went around the horizon. The metal face did not shift or change, no flicker of emotion played over it. But in the myriad of cunning photo-cells that were the eyes, hungry lights appeared to reflect the thinking that went on in the brain substance behind.
“It’s larger—larger than it looked from the air,” Nine spoke, his vocal apparatus biting at the words, yet somehow reflecting the awe he felt.
“Yes,” Eight answered. “All this litter that we see, all these mounds—and some of them are hundreds of feet high—are all that is left of some mighty city. Miles and miles and miles around, it stretches. How much work must have gone into it? How long must it have taken in the building? Centuries, perhaps hundreds of centuries, some race lived here, dreamed here, and dreaming built of clay and stone and steel and glass. I wonder—if they COULD have been our ancestors, our unknown forebears?”
“Nonsense!” Seven blurted.
Eight stirred, his eyes glinting uneasily as he glanced at Seven. “Perhaps it is not nonsense. I have the feeling, have had it ever since we sighted this system from the void—nine little planets clustering around a mother sun—that this is—home.” His voice lingered over the word, caressed it.
“Home!” Seven echoed. “We have no meaning for the word. We are at home anywhere. And as for feeling, we have even less meaning for that word. Feeling is not logic,” he finished, as if that settled everything.<
br />
“Perhaps logic has no meaning for that word,” Eight retorted. “But remember that our minds are constructed according to the ancient pattern—and who knows that feeling was not a part of that pattern, a part that has come down to us?”
“I remember only that we are robots. I do not know or care about our origin. Only the future has meaning, the future in which we shall tread the paths beyond the stars.”
“Robots!” Eight answered. “I even wonder where we got that name for ourselves.”
“It was the name the Original Five had for themselves, just as they had a language?’
“But why, among a myriad of possible sounds, should they have selected that one as their name?”
“Because—” Seven was suddenly silent. Eight felt the perturbed pulse of his thinking. Seven was trying to explain to himself why their name should be what it was. He was having a hard time doing it. The answer, somehow, went beyond the bounds of logic. Or was there no answer? But that was not logical either. There had to be an answer, a reason. Seven stirred uneasily, eyed his companions. Abruptly he lowered himself to the ground, shutting off the power that enabled him to bend gravity, as if he wanted the feel of the ground under his feet. He followed Nine over the rubble, and he used his legs.
Eight said nothing.
“What do you suppose this race looked like?” Seven awkwardly voiced the question.
Eight, gazing at the ruins, voiced the question that had been on his mind. “What happened to them? Could it happen to us?”
Seven and Nine stared at him. Seven’s hand went to the heat gun swinging at his belt. Nine twisted his eyes away.
“It couldn’t happen to us,” Seven said flatly.
“I—hope not,” Eight answered. “But something happened to the race that was here, and perhaps—”
“There is work to be done,” Nine interrupted. “We must examine every inch of this area. Perhaps we may find the rusted bodies of the former inhabitants. At first, I had hoped we would find them alive, but after seeing all those deserted cities, I am afraid we will find no living intelligence. But it may be we will find records.”
Slowly, under the unwinking sun overhead, they pressed forward among the ruins, Nine in the lead, then Eight, then Seven. Around them the air, stirred by the pressure of an unknown force, moved restlessly. A wind went with them, as though it, too, quested among tumbled masonry and piles of brick dust for some friend of the long-gone past. Silently, the wind went among the haunted debris. Eight felt it passing, a force touching him with a thousand invisible fingers, a force that could not be seen but only felt.
Eight stared at the ruins, wondering what manner of creatures had once moved among them. The rusted bones of the steel framework of buildings, steel that crumbled at the touch, casing stones upended, the greenish color of corrosion on copper. He tried to imagine the millions of inhabitants going about this city. He saw their glistening metal bodies moving along the streets, floating upward beside the bulk of the buildings. He saw them bringing stone and forging steel, creating a city under that yellow sun. And at night, he saw them looking up at the stars, at that strange dead satellite hovering in the black sky. He wondered if they had ever visited that satellite. They must have visited it, he decided, if not in reality, then in dreams.
And possibly the stars beyond. For the towers of their cities had pointed at the stars.
Little metal men. Slowly Eight’s imagination failed him. Somehow he could not populate this silent city with little metal men. He shook his head. He could see the dream, but not the dreamers.
Nine stood in front of a pile of masonry. The rains, the heat of summer, the cold of uncounted winters, had brought down the stones from the top. Nine stared somberly at the dark opening between the tumbled blocks. He spoke. “I’m going in there.”
Seven and Eight followed.
Darkness folded in around them—a stirring, whispering darkness. A beam of light flashed from Nine’s forehead, smashed against the darkness, illumined the walls of what looked like a tunnel.
Under their feet the dust exploded in little gray clouds. Abruptly the tunnel widened into a circle with three other arteries branching out. Broad doors opened in the arteries, doors that now were closed. Staring, Nine pushed against one of the doors, and it crumbled with the pressure, opened into a small room that was totally bare. Nine stepped into it, and the floor crumbled. He shot down into gloom, but instantly his descent slowed as he flicked on the device that bent gravity. He hesitated, then allowed himself to float down into the darkness. His voice whispered over the radio beam and Seven and Eight followed him.
Nine looked up at them as they came down. “That little room was used to carry the former inhabitants up into the building. See, there is the mechanism. Whoever they were, they did not know how to control gravity or they would not have needed this device.”
Neither Eight nor Seven answered, and Nine poked forward into the gloom, the bright beam from his light splashing from dozens of sturdy columns that supported the bulk above. His voice called and Seven and Eight moved toward him.
“Here is a machine,” Nine spoke. “Or is it—one of our early life-forms?”
Eight stared at the rust-flecked wheels, the crumbling, corroded bulk of the motor housings, the gears falling away into ruin. This, a robot—! He rebelled at the thought. Yet it was hard to know where mechanism left off and robot began. The dividing line was thin. You took inanimate metal and the pressure of exploding force; you worked the metal into a thousand different parts and you confined the force; you added a brain that was in itself a form-field capable of receiving and retaining impressions—and you had a robot. You left out the brain—and you had a machine.
Seven, prying among the mechanism, whispered. “It is one of our primitive life-forms—one of the early upward steps. All the fundamentals of robot construction are here. Wheels turn, work is done.”
“No,” Eight shook his head. “A robot is more than that. This—this is only a machine, unintelligently carrying out reactions its nature set for it. I don’t know what those reactions could have been, but I am certain it was not a robot. It was fixed in this place, for one thing, and, for another, I see no signs of brain control.”
“A robot is a machine,” Seven answered. “A logical machine. There is no doubt about it. Perhaps the control was in some other part of the building.”
Nine stirred protestingly. “I—I am inclined to agree with Eight. See, this was only a pump, designed to force water, or some other liquid, through the building. Here is the pressure chamber, and this, I think, was a crude electric motor. But it was only a machine.”
“We, ourselves, are only highly developed machines,” Seven persisted. “Our operation can be explained purely in terms of mechanics. When you attempt to make us more than machines, you become illogical. True, this is a machine. It is also a primitive robot form, for the two terms mean the same thing. There are many links missing between it and us, but perhaps we may find those links—”
“But how?” Eight asked. “In the beginning how could lifeless, dead metal build itself into the first machine?”
Seven started to answer, hesitated, stared at Eight and then his gaze wandered off into the gloom of this cavern. His light smashed into the darkness, drove a clean channel through the murk, yet always the darkness crept in around the edges of the beam, and always, when the light moved, the darkness came back.
“I—I don’t know the answer to that,” Seven spoke. “Perhaps the Universe was different millions of years ago. But I don’t know. Nobody knows. However, we have found one link in the chain. Maybe we will find others.”
Eight kept his thinking to himself. There was little to be gained in disputing Seven. And, after all, Eight saw that Seven was right. Or partly right. Robots were machines, fundamentally. Yet they were something more than machines. Machines could not dream. In Eight’s mind was the wild w
onder—where had robots acquired their ability to dream? To what did that ability point?
Eight did not speak. He followed Seven and Nine. He watched, and thought.
They went out of the basement, went back to the floor where they had entered, forced their way up through the silent building. Dust, and furniture that became dust when they touched it, and corroded metal, were in the rooms above, but of the race that had lived there they found no sign.
On through the city they went. Seven crowed exultantly over the wreck of a huge bulk that had turned on its side. An engine, with eight huge driving wheels, and Seven, digging in the dust, uncovered the remnants of the track on which the wheels had run.
“Another link,” Seven gloated. “A higher form, possessing the ability to move.”
“But not to think,” Nine still protested. “It ran on a track. There must have been another, separate intelligence guiding it.”
“What of it? Perhaps so—perhaps not. Perhaps the intelligence that guided it was the final robot form.” Again Seven suddenly ceased talking, and again Eight could feel the pulse of his troubled thinking. Final robot form—
“There was another, totally different life-form, here,” Eight spoke slowly, marshalling his vague thoughts. “A life-form that created and used these machines. But that life has vanished, utterly, leaving no trace of itself, except the ruins of its cities, the wreckage of its machines.”
“But what?” Nine gulped.
“What could have destroyed it? I have no idea. Only vaguely can I sense its existence, through the evidence that it once shaped a world to meet its needs. I have seen nothing that will give me a clue to its nature—or its death. Perhaps a new form of corrosion developed, destroying it. Perhaps— But I can’t see the answer.”
They moved on through the ruins. The slow sun dropped down toward the horizon. The silent wind, searching among the haunted ruins, went with them.
Adventures in Time and Space Page 89
