by Brian N Ball
Her laugh barely impinged on his consciousness. It brought Horace hurrying back, however. Within five seconds of the first signs of returning consciousness on the part of the two humans—one of them, anyway—the furred red automaton returned from his inspection of the terrain.
“Welcome to Talisker, Miss Hassell!” Horace said.
“Welcome yourself,” Liz told it. “Try not to adopt an air of superior knowledge or enlightenment, will you?” She did not wait for an answer. The trouble with this kind of machine was that it did know a good deal more than any human, and it would almost certainly be capable of making better reasoned decisions: it was as well to make one’s position clear at the outset. The robots soon pressed home an advantage. “Where have you been?” she demanded.
“Why, exercising my function as guide, miss!” it said, hurt. “I thought a short perambulation—”
“And you found what?”
The sun was sinking fast. The air was chill now. Liz could see beads of dew on Marvell’s ridiculous hat. He was snoring with a dull sound, mouth half-open, eyes occasionally shifting beneath the lids; he looked like a great lazy sea cow, a bewhiskered and gross creature. Liz shuddered. He should have been fined down by the sausage machine. She recalled Dyson’s slim elegance with a pang. Horace considered his answer as she stared at Marvell.
“I found surprisingly little, miss,” the robot announced. “It seems that we have been set down in a backwater. There are none of the major Frames boundaries nearby, and I could find no sign of dwellings or industry. There are tracks in that direction,” he said, indicating the path of the orange haze, “but not roads. Miss Hassell, this part of Talisker is empty. Should I awaken Director Marvell?”
“No.” Liz felt cold as a slight wind came from the east. “Not yet. Find somewhere for us to sleep tonight. And get food ready.”
The robot looked at Marvell. “Perhaps it would be better if—”
“Now!”
“Yes, miss.”
It loped off, an offended automaton. Liz kicked Marvell in the ribs as soon as Horace had disappeared into the gloom. Marvell sputtered and, as she kicked again, roared out in pain.
“What! What are you doing?”
He got to his feet with a speed that surprised Liz. She had no time to get in a third kick.
“Christ!” said Marvell, ignoring her and the reason for her assault. “We’re there—here! It really happened—and you’re here too! Oh, dear God, they’ve done it!” He suddenly reached a hand to the back of his neck. “Christ!” he exploded, “My head—it hurts! That machine—those lunatics of robots! They sent me through cell-recycling. Me! Marvell!”
“It didn’t work.”
Marvell frowned. “It didn’t. Spingarn’s got a hand in it! That cunning bastard’s deliberately left us alone!”
“You’ve got a persecution mania about Spingarn, Marvell. He couldn’t have planned it—no!”
“So why are you still the scheming bitch you always were? Why not a memory recycling for you? Or me,” he added as an afterthought.
Liz shrugged.
“Don’t let it worry you. I’m quite sure there are going to be serious worries and soon.” She was struck by Marvell’s unhappy look. “Don’t tell me this is the first time for you! Not the first time in the Frames?”
Marvell grimaced.
“Hated them! Always have! The main reason I went for Direction was to keep free of the Frames!”
“Why?”
Marvell was indignant.
“I loathed the idea of playing a part—why should I be anything but me—me!”
“Well, you egocentric clown, Marvell!” said Liz. But she felt uncertain about her judgment. “So that was why you kicked up so much when they slipped you the memory-cell. Your first time!”
“The first time!” Marvell groaned. “And look what I get! I’m cold, hungry and frightened, Christ, and I’m stuck with an infuriating bitch like you!” He looked around and took in the nature of the surroundings. “And look at it! Fields! Trees! Not a building in sight! Where am I going to sleep? And what am I going to eat?” He swatted an insect. “And bugs!”
He looked about him in disgust. His clothes hung disheveled about his large frame. His bald head wrinkled as he shivered at the cold wind that blew strongly now. The trees had a threatening appearance, gnarled branches took on eerie shapes. As the sun’s disc disappeared, the light decreased rapidly; two moons began to wriggle over the horizon, though they were more like shifting, unreal phantoms than celestial bodies.
“I’m not built for the outdoor life!” Marvell groaned.
“Do something, Liz—you’re my assistant, get food! Get a bed for me!”
Liz looked at the shivering man with a measure of contempt. How could such a large man be so poor-spirited?
“Oh, you poor sod,” she said. “Here’s Horace. With food, if I’m not mistaken.”
Horace appeared carrying a rough-woven mat bulging with greenery. Over his shoulder, Liz could make out the form of a lifeless animal. Its white-specked legs swayed as Horace hefted it over his thin shoulder. Marvell watched in horror.
“Liz!” he got out. “Liz, what’s that mad robot up to? He’s killing— Liz, the thing’s gone berserk!” He looked about for a place of sanctuary. “Liz!”
Horace paid no attention to the outburst. The robot addressed itself to Liz Hassell:
“I regret that I was unable to find suitable accommodation for the night. There are buildings, but they are at some considerable distance from here. I saw the roofs in the far distance. I would respectfully suggest that for tonight, anyway, you stayed here.” He indicated the dead creature. “The flesh is edible, miss. And I have acquired sufficient fruit and vegetables to make a satisfactory meal.”
“Very good, Horace,” said Liz.
“Very good?” Marvell muttered, looking from one to another. “Very good?” He shuddered at the sight of a trickle of dark blood that came from the little deer’s throat. “Christ, I can’t eat that! You don’t expect me to eat—flesh!”
“You won’t get anything else,” Liz pointed out.
“I’ve never eaten raw flesh—raw food!”
“You haven’t done very much, have you?” Liz said placidly. “Horace, get firewood. And after that, make us some sort of shelter—branches, with a covering of some sort. You can do that?”
“Certainly, miss!” Horace hesitated. “I am not able to supply bio-mass, miss. Director Marvell will appreciate that I have my instructions?”
Marvell sat down shaking his head sadly.
“Dear Christ,” he said. “Instructions too?”
“Get moving,” Liz told the robot. To Marvell she said crisply: “I expect its instructions are that we have to live off the land—no artificial foods, no transport devices, and quite possibly no weapons. Center wants us to use our own initiative, with only a certain amount of assistance from Horace. He can hunt, it seems, but not make the pap we live on usually.” She smiled. “Can you skin this?” she said, indicating the still-warm body.
Marvell looked away, shuddering afresh.
Horace provided a sharp knife, though Liz insisted on doing the butchery of the carcass. Marvell tried to stack dried twigs and branches until Horace took time off from interweaving birch branches for their shelter to make a fire. By the time the steaks were sizzling on the ends of pointed sticks, the twin moons were well up in the violet-black sky. There was no sense of danger, no feeling of apprehension in Liz’s mind. No night-calls disturbed the air. The wind, which had freshened considerably for an hour, dropped to a slight breeze that was enough to build long trails of sparks from the fire. Marvell watched first Liz, who turned the steaks, and Horace, who had almost completed a rough hut. Liz passed a stick to Marvell.
“Eat,” she said. “It’s burned on the outside, but you’ll find it good and red after the black bit.”
“Oh Christ,” whispered Marvell, holding the stick as if it would attack him.
“Eat it!”
“No!”
“Try some of these.”
Liz passed the green fruits and the vegetables. Marvell groaned afresh.
“Then starve!” Liz told him. She moved closer to the fire and sat munching the steaks with great pleasure. Marvell watched for a few minutes.
“Horace!” he called.
“Sir?”
“No real food?”
“None, sir. I am programmed to be able to offer the planet’s normal facilities only. Unfortunately, sir, we have been deposited in a primitive area which supported an agricultural community. There is no obvious sign of advanced civilization about here.”
Marvell stared at the meat he had rejected.
“It isn’t hygienic,” he said, undecided. “It’ll be full of harmful bugs—no processing at all!” Liz smiled. “Try it.”
He accepted the offer and nervously bit into the meat. In the bright firelight, Liz saw his expression change from nervous horror to hunger. He ripped a piece off and swallowed.
“It’s gritty and foul,” he said. “But it is food.”
He ate an unripe apple after several pieces of steak. Liz fell to looking out at the stars as Marvell finished his meal. She was a little abstracted, but that was not unexpected. Powerful drugs had held the two of them in a state of slightly euphoric unconsciousness during the long journey to the Rim and Talisker, with its twin gyrating moons. There would be residual traces of the drugs. Was that why they had been set down in this peaceful backwater, with its harmless green countryside and its ready food supplies? To give them a day of orientation?
“I don’t like it,” Marvell said, when he was through eating.
“What?”
“It’s all too easy! No sign of anything but this overgrown garden! It’s unnatural! Talisker’s supposed to be dangerous! Horace!”
“Sir?”
“Is it dangerous?”
Horace pondered the matter.
“I could guess about the inherent possibilities of the situation. I still have my deductive facilities, sir.”
“So go on!”
“Well, sir, if we examine the static elements of the situation, we soon come up against a high degree of certain probabilities.”
“Be precise, Horace! Enough of your robotic jargon! You’re not talking to another bloody machine!”
The red-gold fur on the carapace of the robot shivered with disgust. Liz saw that Horace detested Marvell’s crude expletives.
“Very well, sir,” it said, a world of pointed distaste in its tones. “You have been advised to—”
“Advised! Forced into this bloody mad world!”
“—advised to follow Mr. Spingarn and his party to Talisker to discover whether or not the apparently deserted condition of the planet has any relationship with the hypothetical Alien presence.”
“Yes,” said Liz. She looked out at the few stars again. Other island universes made those brightly glowing white-blue spangles in the sky, for Talisker swam a solitary course at the far edge of the Galaxy. Alien!
How had it arrived here?
“Well, sir, and Miss Hassell,” the robot went on, “the fact that you are both in command of your own personae, that is,” he said with a glance at Marvell’s lowering face, “because you are both yourselves still, is no indication that you will remain so. And because there is apparent security hereabouts is no indication that there is no danger. You see, the Laws of Probability won’t function with a high Certainty Quotient, not on Talisker.”
Liz felt a strange sense of frightened wonder, much the same as she had felt when she saw the fliers on the ancient piece of battle film; Horace was promising a random situation. It didn’t seem possible, not when they sat on the patch of dry grass around the blazing fire, not when the night sky above them was filled with splendid, isolated star systems, and two crazy moons waltzed about thin, high clouds. She recognized that she had experienced only a sense of anticlimax up to that moment. All the speculation and amazement she had undergone when the strange adventure was thrust on her had almost been dissipated. It returned with a sweeping nerve-shaking power.
“Make it simple for a simple man,” complained Marvell. He picked meat from his teeth with a twig.
“Yes, sir.” Horace was a skeletal red ghost in the firelight. “Cell-fusion hasn’t taken place yet in your brains, neither yours nor Miss Hassell’s. It could do so at any moment—any time that there was a need for you to adapt to one of Talisker’s Frames.”
“So we’re waiting,” said Liz slowly. “We’re waiting with a genetic time-bomb in here.” She felt the back of her head. There was a tiny needle of pain as she pressed at the base of her skull, though she might have imagined it.
“Christ,” said Marvell, yawning. “That’s all I need. The back of my head ready to explode. I suppose Spingarn would find it funny. I wonder where he is.”
Marvell looked uneasily into the darkness.
There was enough moonlight to illuminate the trees and the low sweep of the hills. They were gray-green in the bright whiteness. Liz thought of the strange sights she had seen in the Director’s screens, back at Center: beyond the low hills were the ruins of all Talisker’s experimental, haunted Frames.
“Spingarn, sir?” said Horace. “I’ve given the matter thought. I am of the opinion that both he and his companions—a lady called Ethel and a destroyed psyche who goes by the name of Sergeant Hawk—will be found when we come into contact with some of the random situations set up by the Alien. That’s my assessment of the probabilities at the moment.”
“Random situations set up by the Alien?” repeated Liz. “You think this hypothetical Alien has emptied Talisker?”
Horace’s face showed sardonic amusement.
“I don’t believe that Talisker is empty, miss! Oh, no! The Probability Quotient for Talisker having been depopulated is very low indeed!”
“But we saw the place was empty!” Liz protested. “We saw nothing on the screens—not a sign of human life!”
“Quite, miss,” the robot agreed.
Marvell sensed the quiet satisfaction in the automaton’s high-pitched voice.
“ ‘Not a sign—’” he repeated. “You said there wasn’t a sign of—”
“Human life,” said Liz slowly. “No human life.” She and Marvell scanned the darkness. There were shapes in the darkness. Tussocks of grass seemed to edge nearer; small, isolated bushes grew menacing protuberances; the slight wind brought a signing noise from the beeches. “If not human life, then what?”
“This Alien,” said Marvell, breaking a long silence. “Don’t you recall anything about it? Where it came from, what it’s doing here, what it wants?”
Horace was enjoying himself.
“I was able to read Spingarn’s accounts, sir—though my memory-banks were wiped clean of all that occurred while I accompanied Mr. Spingarn on my first visit to Talisker, I was instructed by, the, ah, Guardians,” and his voice was reverent, “to scan the reports of the expedition. The bare facts, as it were. It seems that the Alien presence, if there is one here, is unsure of its function. It seems to be in much the same circumstances as yourself and Miss Hassell, sir.”
“Christ,” said Marvell with feeling.
“Lost,” said Liz. “It’s lost?”
“So my interpretation of the Probability Quotient would suggest,” agreed the robot. “Yes, miss, lost.”
“I’ve had enough for one day,” Marvell said briskly. “I need sleep. Riddles don’t interest me anymore. Alien! Little lost Alien! Dear Christ, I wish I could get back to civilization! I’m probably crawling with diseases. Is that hut free of bugs?” he demanded of Horace.
“Entirely habitable, sir. You rest on the dried bracken.”
“Liz?” asked Marvell, noting her well-rounded figure.
“If I must! But keep away from me!”
Marvell shrugged.
“It wouldn’t be hygienic anyway.”
Liz repress
ed an urge to giggle. Marvell was too much. The hotshot Director obsessed with sanitation—and a planet that was empty but not empty. And a thing from outside the Universe, lost on Talisker.
She fell asleep watching the glitter of stars through the tiny gaps in the interwoven branches.
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Dawn brought a blast of noise from thousands of birds. Liz awoke to find that she and Marvell had moved closer during the night; his bulk impinged on her. She recalled that she had been grateful for the warmth of his large body. The whistling, shrieking, calling and croaking of the birds reminded her of their mission. They were on Talisker. The robot. Where was it?
She crawled out of the makeshift shelter on hands and knees. Scores of birds in the nearby copse erupted in flight as she emerged. She grinned. In the soft furs she habitually wore, she must look like some predator. Behind her, Marvell moaned in his sleep.
There was no sign of the robot.
The ashes of last night’s fire swirled in the light wind; it was dawn, with red-pink glows just below the horizon. The moons were down. It would be a fine day. The birds shrilled louder as she got to her feet.
“Horace!” she called loudly. “Horace!”
Mist swirled over the little brook. She realized that she was thirsty. Dirty too, with fingers greasy still from the fat of the deer. She ran her fingers through her fine black hair and felt matted twists; a flea ran down her bare arm. She shuddered and ran to the brook.
The wet grass sparkled under her bare feet; it was cold, but invigorating. Where was Talisker’s danger? It was almost like being back in the kind of Primitive Frames she delighted in—there was the challenge of close contact with natural things, civilization was a Galaxy away. The birds were suddenly quiet.
