Uncanny Tales

by Robert Sheckley

“What do you suppose that could be?”

  “The most reasonable supposition is that you were sent to replace my squire Sancho Panza, who disappeared some time ago under circumstances I believe now were uncanny, and arranged by forces greater than I can imagine. Sancho is gone, you are here. It seems to me that your duty, and a great one, is to replace Sancho, to be my squire.”

  “I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Laurent said.

  “Can you think of another way?”

  “As a matter of fact, I can. I think I might have come here, or been sent here, for no purpose at all, but as a result of some blind but natural process, unique and not to be repeated. This seems likely to me. Therefore I ask you to assist me in returning to where I came from.”

  The quijote pondered for a while, then said, “Do you have some urgent task to perform back where you came from?”

  “Not really,” Laurent said.

  “Are there people—a wife, perhaps, or ageing parents, who are awaiting you, and are grief-stricken at the thought that you might not return?”

  “My parents are long dead,” Laurent said. “I have no wife, and I broke up with my girlfriend a few months ago.”

  “So you have no need to return.”

  “No need, no. But I want to.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a hell of a question,” Laurent said, with a little spurt of anger. “Maybe I have work to do back where I come from.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, in that case, why not stay here with me, be my squire, and assist me in ridding the world of evil, and in rescuing my lady Psyche, whose unsurpassed beauty I must ask you to take solely on the basis of my word.”

  “I am aware of the honor you pay me with your suggestion,” Laurent said cautiously. “But really, I don’t think this sort of thing is for me.”

  “No? I had the impression that you were made of the true mettle. If you do well in this, Laurent, I will find a way to make you a knight, too.”

  “That’s good of you, but really, I think I’ll pass.”

  “Very well,” the quijote said. “I must be on my way. I will be sorry to lose your company, but if you say it must be so, I can only bow to your decision.”

  The quijote walked toward his horse. Laurent said, “Hey, wait a minute! Where are you going?”

  “The work of knight-errantry calls me. Farewell, my friend.”

  “Hey, don’t leave yet. How do I get back to my own time?”

  “I have no idea,” the quijote said. “All in good time, no doubt, that which brought you here may see fit to return you, or take you elsewhere.”

  The quijote put his hands on Rocinante’s saddle. “Steady, noble steed!” he said.

  “Listen,” Laurent said. “I’ve reconsidered. I’ll stay with you until I find some way to get out of here. Will that do?”

  “It will,” the quijote said. “I do not seek to bind you to me for any definite length of time. Come with me by all means and we will see what fate has in store for us. And if I can assist you in returning to your own time and place, doubt not but that I will do so.”

  “Only one problem,” Laurent said. “I don’t have anything to ride. That could slow us down.”

  “You need not walk,” the quijote said. “When Sancho went away, he left behind his donkey. You shall have it.”

  Laurent looked around, expecting to see the donkey tethered to a nearby tree. The quijote’s long melancholy face broke into a smile when he noticed this, and even his moustache quivered in mirth.

  “You’ll not find the donkey by looking around,” he said. “I have him safely here, where he can’t get away.”

  The quijote walked up to his mechanical horse, Rocinante, and unbuckled one of the capacious saddlebags strapped to the creature’s side. From it he removed piece after piece of sheet metal which he attached to each other by screws already set loosely in place. Removing more parts from the saddlebag, he set in legs, and then a sheet metal donkey head in two pieces which fit neatly together. To this he added a little sealed-unit brain. Fishing deep into the saddlebag he found a small motor, which he set into place on mounts in the creature’s chest. Then he connected the color- coded wires. He closed the chest cavity with a metal plate, and pressed a button on the donkey’s forehead. It came to life at once, made a donkey-like braying sound, then stood by docilely, waiting to be mounted.

  So Laurent and the quijote went bouncing merrily along through the green forest, the Don on Rocinante, Laurent on Sancho’s mechanized donkey. It was a beautiful summer day. Birds twittered overhead, there was a light warm breeze, and Laurent found it difficult to contemplate danger on a day like this.

  The day darkened as they proceeded among the trees, following a faint path. The future of the day seemed to be foreshadowing itself. Little creatures, squirrels and the like, peeked out at them. They looked like squirrels, but Laurent soon noticed they were mechanical creatures in squirrel skins. Through gaps in the canopy cover, Laurent could peer upward and notice that the sky had turned a hazy blue-white, and there were faint thin dark lines across it, like construction lines on a blueprint.

  After this the soil firmed up again, and they skirted around a region of thin, whip-like plants that reached out for them with flexible branches like tentacles.

  And then they were past that, toiling up a steep ridge of sliding sand, where every three steps forward resulted in one step back, as they lost ground even as they struggled to gain it.

  They came at last to a region where the trees were unlike the sort of trees they had passed through before. These trees appeared to have some of the attributes of animals or machines. Their barky exteriors were in constant motion, and they had long slits about four feet up from the ground. These slits writhed and opened and closed, revealing stainless steel teeth. These trees were alive in some way that normal trees never were.

  “What are those things?” Laurent asked the quijote.

  “They are manufactured trees,” the quijote said. “The work of The Robot Factory. Don’t get too close to them. They are dangerous.”

  Laurent didn’t need any further warning. Several of the trees had leaned forward and snapped at him. Luckily, his mechanical donkey was alert and shied away in time.

  “What does this mean?” Laurent asked.

  “It means we are approaching the domain of the Factory

  Robot, the threshold where the natural gives way to the super-natural, and the real turns into the hyper-real. We are nearing the place where our greatest enemy awaits.”

  “And who would that be?” Laurent asked.

  “At the heart of all this is that fiend in robot form known as The Robot Factory. He is the one we must defeat in order to rid the world of the monstrous evil of industrialization.”

  They got past the mechanical trees, and now were in a dark and evil-looking wasteland. The sky had become dark and forbidding. They were in a swamp now, and progress was slow, even after their steeds extruded large flat pads which held their weight better in the oozy, sandy, sinking soil.

  Back onto firmer ground, out of the forest and swamp, then onto hard-packed sand. A limitless wasteland stretched around them. The way now led to a black line in the sand, where railway tracks had been laid. A sign proclaimed this a Right of Way.

  “Beyond this point,” the quijote said, “is the country of hybrid and non-protoplasmic creations. No humans or humanizing robots are permitted past this point except by invitation.”

  Laurent looked up the long gleaming line of railroad track. And heard, very faintly in the distance, the sound of the train engine.

  “What is that?”

  “It is the Guardian of the Perimeter, the locomotive that patrols the track. It is coming.”

  On top of the ridge there was a railroad track, which extended into the distance on either side as far as the eye could see. In front of them was a sign. It read: ROBOT FACTORY RIGHT OF WAY.

  “When we cross
this track,” the quijote said, “we are in the domain of The Robot Factory. After this, the going may get difficult.”

  “Tell me about it,” Laurent said. He was hot and sweaty, and scratched by the whippy plants they had passed through. He was thinking that he’d had about enough of this. He wondered why they were venturing into this territory where they obviously weren’t wanted. It occurred to him now that the quijote robot might be intelligent but was probably insane.

  “Couldn’t we go back and get some more men? Some help?”

  “The glory is ours because the task is ours. Let others find their own glory. This one will be mine alone. And of course yours, my faithful squire. But mainly mine.”

  Laurent was not put out by this. He already knew that the quijote was a glutton for glory, and ready to do what was necessary to obtain it.

  “Might I ask just what it is we’re trying to do?”

  “I thought it was obvious. We are going to defeat The Robot Factory’s greatest champion, the Feral Locomotive.”

  “And then?”

  “You will see,” the quijote said. “Then we will go on to the factory itself and rescue my lady Psyche, the great and most renowned world beauty.”

  “One thing at a time,” Laurent said. “You say we must defeat the Feral Locomotive first.”

  “You heard me correctly.”

  “I don’t see any locomotive.”

  “Listen. It is coming.”

  Laurent listened, and in the far distance he heard, very faintly, the mournful sound of a train whistle.

  “It sounds a long way away.”

  “It will be here very soon. The Feral Locomotive allows no one to cross its Right of Way. But we will show it a thing or two.”

  The whistle sounded again, louder this time, and looking to the left, Laurent could see a wink of light far down the track.

  “Is that it?”

  “It is. It comes whenever anyone threatens to enter the Factory’s domain.”

  The dot of light increased with great speed, and soon Laurent could make out a single bright light on the front of a massive black locomotive. Not long after that he could make out other sounds—the heavy panting of the locomotive’s engine, the thunderous sounds of its gigantic pistons, rising and falling like fate itself, the sharp click of its wheels on the track, and the rolling thunder of its passage.

  Laurent didn’t like this one bit. Already he could smell the coal smoke from its smokestack, and moments later the locomotive had arrived and come to a stop near where they stood at the edge of the track.

  “What miserable fool dares approach my Right of Way!” the locomotive shouted in a deep voice in which were mixed the panting sound of its engine and the black smell of its smoke.

  “It is I, the quijote!” the mad robot declared. “I challenge your right to an exclusive right of way, and your right even to exist. Back up and return to your roundhouse, Feral Locomotive, or I swear by the beauty of my lady Psyche that I will dismember you, puncture your air pressure chamber, chop out your diseased brain, and make it as if you had never lived on this earth.”

  The single headlight glared at them. A voice within the locomotive declared, “I recognize you, quijote. As for your lady love, I transported her recently to my master, The Robot Factory, and she didn’t look so lovely, her eyes red from crying and her cheeks wan with fear.”

  “You lie, coward!” the quijote cried. “My lady is the fairest creature upon this earth, wan lips and red eyes and all. She will be restored to her true complexion as soon as I rescue her.”

  In a low voice, the quijote said to Laurent, “Distract this creature, good Laurent, so that my attack will be all the more impetuous and irresistible.”

  Laurent was half beside himself with fear, for the Feral Locomotive, snorting smoke and with its stainless-steel trim glittering in the pale sunlight, set off by the black of its main body, seemed the very essence of enraged machinery, machinery with a personal interest in destroying him. Nevertheless, he pressed his heels into the donkey’s side, closed his eyes, and rode at the monster machine.

  When he opened his eyes, he was up close beside the locomotive. There was an iron staff in his hand—how had that gotten there? No time to ask, no way to find out, he blundered forward and thrust the staff into the high-spoked wheels of the locomotive.

  There was a bellow of rage. The great wheels strained for a moment. The iron staff bent, and then shattered. Pieces of it went flying, and one of those pieces struck his donkey full on the flank, narrowly missing Laurent’s leg. The donkey was knocked down by the blow, and Laurent was sent sprawling. He looked up to see a sort of crane set on top of the locomotive, with perhaps a ton of coal in its scoop, swinging out to drop its load on him.

  It was the end, Laurent was sure of it. But he had reckoned without the quijote. During the moment when he had distracted the locomotive, the quijote had couched his lance and charged.

  As he scrambled out of the way, Laurent was aware that the quijote was attacking. Rocinante was moving faster than he had believed possible. Flecks of oily mucus were coming from her nostrils, and her breath was gray exhaust vapor.

  The don was leaning well back in his saddle, his lance tucked tightly under one arm, shield raised on the other arm. Laurent couldn’t imagine what harm he expected to do to this great machine, but he saw the lance hit true in the center of a small brass plug in the shiny master cylinder. Fairly and truly struck, the plug was pushed into the cylinder. There was a loud sighing sound of compressed air escaping, and a moment later, the tall connecting rods came to a stop.

  The quijote still sat tall in the saddle, having not been unseated by the collision.

  “Now, caitiff,” he cried, “acknowledge yourself defeated.”

  “You’ve stripped me of power,” the locomotive said in a whisper of escaping air. “I am on battery standby now, barely able to move. You have defeated me, quijote machine.”

  “Acknowledge that my lady Psyche is the fairest in the land.”

  “It matters not to me. All humans look alike. Have it your way, I so acknowledge.”

  “Swear that you will change your ways and henceforth serve mankind.”

  “I do so swear.”

  “And if you have power enough to limp back to your roundhouse, tell whoever might be there who did this to you.”

  “Damn you, quijote! Traitor to your own kind.”

  “Acknowledge!”

  The locomotive let loose a hiss of steam that may have signaled assent. The connecting rods went into reverse and rose and fell again as the locomotive, on battery power, backed away in defeat.

  The donkey was disabled, her tiny brain shattered. Laurent got up on Rocinante, behind the quijote, and they crossed the track and rode on.

  After a while they came to a barren ridge from which Laurent could see a wide sweep of land, extending to the furthest horizons on all sides. But in the direction the quijote had elected as Straight Ahead, Laurent could make out a dark huddled mass on the desert floor.

  They continued, and soon the mass resolved into the dark, misshapen mass of The Robot Factory. As they came closer, it began to resemble a sort of terrible, deteriorated city. The sun, hidden behind a dense white haze, didn’t permit Laurent to pick out individual features yet. But he was close enough to see that it was a place he didn’t want to go to.

  The quijote stopped long enough for Laurent to take a drink of warmish water from the quijote’s canteen. The quijote paced while Laurent was drinking, and finally said, “Can’t we get on with it, friend Laurent?”

  Laurent pointed out that he was only flesh and blood, not the insensate metal of his knight-errant companion.

  “Climb up behind me,” the quijote said. “We might as well finish what we’ve begun.”

  Rocinante started up smoothly, and was soon moving at a good pace, legs automatically adjusting to the uneven terrain. The motion was not difficult. It was easier than riding a real horse. Laurent was lulled into
a half sleep by the smooth motion, and the welcome sensation of air flowing across his face and body. He dozed. A trotting rhythm awoke him. They were within the factory zone, on a street lined with three- and four-story warehouse structures. They were alone on the street, though further along Laurent could see a small robot truck carrying sections of iron pipe. The air was hot and smoky. Further along was The Robot Factory which Laurent had glimpsed from the ridge.

  At last they emerged from the warren of streets, into a large concrete plaza. The Robot Factory was directly ahead. It was an enormous concrete shell, without windows, but with several doorways along the base. It had towering smokestacks, from which arose thin tendrils of bluish-gray smoke.

  “Here we are,” the quijote said.

  “Where’s the boss robot? Inside?”

  “The factory is the boss robot,” the quijote said.

  Laurent didn’t know why, but he had been picturing a small, gnome-like robot living inside the building. But it made sense that the factory itself was the boss robot.

  “Do we have to go inside to talk to him?” he asked.

  “You could try shouting from here,” the quijote told him.

  The idea of going into that enormous building didn’t sit well with Laurent. It felt like he’d be walking into the stomach of some metallic monster.

  He tried a couple of shouts, hoping that some mechanical representative of the factory would come out to do battle with the quijote, but there was no response. He said to the quijote, “OK, let’s do it.” Quijote nodded, dismounted, left his lance with Rocinante, and with sword in hand advanced on the factory. Laurent followed, trailing a few steps behind.

  Inside, they passed through a sort of huge machine shop, with pulleys and belts running on rollers overhead. It seemed to be a kind of robot assembly line. The robot workers standing at the lathes and stamping machines didn’t look independent, free-standing, like the quijote. They appeared to be just equipment, controlled from elsewhere by a dense and frequently patched maze of circuitry which terminated in a large black plug set into one wall. They didn’t look up. They didn’t have eyes to see with, anyhow. They seemed to be creating outer casings for robots. It was a region of deafening noise and stifling heat. Laurent was glad when they came to a flight of stairs and climbed up, out of the bedlam.