The Eleventh Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by F. L. Wallace

  It struck him on the side of the head, hard. Some of the makeup chipped and fell off, but that was less important than yanking out the tangle gun. He fired twice, once at her feet and once at her shoulders. He had aimed at her head, but the shot went low.

  * * * *

  Her face was still pretty, though no longer indifferent or so strong. “What do you want?” she screamed. “Why don’t you leave me alone? I can’t help you. Nobody can.”

  She was standing there rigid, not daring to move. The robe rippled in a breeze from the vent and the tangle stuff gripped it and the fabric tore. She’d stand there a few more hours and then topple over. They’d find her in the morning and remove the tangle with the special tongs.

  As for himself, it was too late. He might have got off Venus at one time if he had concentrated on it. He hadn’t tried harder because of Doumya Filone. He had wanted to believe her because—well, because.

  “I told you I’d help, Jadiver. I will.” The voice was distinct.

  It wasn’t Doumya Filone who’d said it. A tangle strand had worked up her throat and gripped her face. She couldn’t speak if she tried. Her gray eyes weren’t gray; they were the color of tears.

  * * * *

  He looked around. It wasn’t Doumya Filone—and there wasn’t any other person in the room.

  “I’ve kept the police away,” said the familiar voice. “I can protect you for a while longer. There’s still time to save yourself. But you have to guess right. You can’t make any more mistakes.”

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a voice. Doumya Filone didn’t hear it; that was obvious. It was the circuit then. Someone was making use of the machine to actuate the auditory nerve directly. That was what he seemed to hear.

  Jadiver was tired and his body grimy, muscles twitching under the tension. But if his unknown friend—real, after all—could out-wit a room full of police and tinker with the mechanism which was supposed to spot him, he couldn’t do less.

  He grinned. “I’ll make it this time. I know what to do.”

  “The police haven’t given up,” said the voice. “I’m going to be busy with them. Don’t expect further communication from me.”

  He didn’t know who the person was, in spite of the haunting familiarity of the voice. And he wasn’t going to find out soon. Probably never. It was enough, however, to know that he had a friend.

  He left Doumya Filone standing there, which was a mistake, he realized as he reached the front office. He should have fired once more at her hands. The screen was crackling; her hands had been free and she’d managed to turn the screen on before the tangle strands interfered with her movement.

  He’d made a grave error, but not necessarily fatal. It would be some time before anyone got there. By then he hoped to be safe.

  He slipped through the corridors, went out the rear of the building and looked around for an air cab. The place was deserted at this hour and no cabs were in the nearby sky.

  He had to walk and he didn’t have that much time. He headed toward the nearest main thoroughfare. It was in the opposite direction to his destination, but he should be able to find an air cab there. He was walking too fast, for a light flashed down on him. He wasn’t presentable and his haste was suspicious.

  “Stop,” said the amplified voice. It was probably just a routine check, but he couldn’t risk even that.

  He dodged into a space between two buildings and began to run. In the center of town, this would be a blind alley, but in this section it wasn’t. There was a chance he could lose them. The buildings were just high enough so that they couldn’t use the air car and they’d have to follow on foot.

  The patrol car alighted almost instantly and one of the policemen started after him. The man following him knew his business and was in good physical condition, better than Jadiver was after days of tension and little sleep.

  Jadiver turned and snapped a half dozen shots at his pursuer. He was lucky, a couple were close enough. The policeman crashed to the ground and began to swear. His voice was choked off in seconds.

  The other one got out of the patrol car and let it stand. It was the principle of the thing: nobody did that to a policeman. Jadiver had a substantial lead and it was dark, but he didn’t know the route. Jadiver was enormously tired and this was the policeman’s regular beat. The gap between them closed rapidly.

  Out of breath and time and space to move around in, Jadiver took the wrong turn because the man was so close—and found himself boxed in.

  * * * *

  Crouching, Jadiver fired at the oncoming man, a dark shape he sensed rather than saw. The tangle gun clicked futilely, out of ammunition. He fumbled hastily for a clip; before he could reload, the policeman squeezed the trigger and held it down.

  The bullets didn’t hit him, they were set to detonate a fraction of an inch away. He gave up and awaited the constricting violence of the tangle strands.

  The bullets detonated and the strands flashed out, glowing slightly in the darkness. They never touched him; instead, they bent into strange shapes and flipped away. The stickiest substance known, and one of the strongest, from which there was no escape, yet it would not adhere to him—was, in fact, forcefully repelled!

  It was that skin, of course, the synthetic substance they had put on him over the circuit. They should have tested it under these conditions. They might not have been so anxious to boil men alive.

  He felt that he was almost invincible. It was an exhilarating feeling. He stopped trying to reload the tangle gun and stood up. He sprinted at the policeman, who stood his ground, firing frantically at a target he could not miss and yet did not hit. The tangle strands shattered all around the target.

  Jadiver swung the gun with his remaining strength; the butt connected with the policeman’s forehead.

  Jadiver scooped up the discarded tangle gun and fired twice at close range, in case the man should decide to revive too soon, which was doubtful. He went back and entered the idling patrol car. He hadn’t lost much time, after all.

  He sat the car down on top of a building near the edge of the rocketport, straightened his clothing and wiped the grime off his face. Some of the disguise went, too, but that no longer mattered much.

  He stepped out of the elevator and walked casually along the street until he came to the interplanetary flight office. The same robot was there—would be there every hour, day and night, until the rocketport was expanded and the building torn down and rebuilt, or the robot itself wore out and had to be replaced.

  The clerk looked up eagerly. “You’re back. I knew I could count on you.”

  “I’m interested in that flight you were telling me about,” said Jadiver.

  “We’ve changed rates,” the robot clerk replied, beaming. “It was a bargain before, but just listen to the revised offer. We pay you, on a per diem basis—subjective, of course. When you arrive, you actually have a bank account waiting for you.”

  Per diem, subjective—the time that seemed to elapse when the rocket was traveling near the speed of light. It wasn’t as good as the robot made it sound.

  “Never mind that,” said Jadiver. “I’ll take it if it’s going far.”

  “Going far!” echoed the clerk.

  A policeman sauntered by outside, just looking, but that was enough.

  “I said I’d take it,” Jadiver repeated in a loud voice.

  The clerk deflated. “I wish I could go with you,” it explained wistfully. It reached under the counter and pulled out a perforated tape. “This will get you on the ship, and it also constitutes the contract. Just present it at the other end and collect your money. You can send for your baggage after you’re on board.”

  Jadiver opened his mouth and then closed it. His baggage was intangible, mostly experience, not much of it pleasant.

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  The clerk came out from behind the counter and watched Jadiver leave. Lights from the rocketport glittered in its robot eyes.

  *
* * *

  Jadiver paced about the ship. It was not enough to be on it, for the police could still trace him. And if they did, they could get him off. It was not only himself, there was his unknown friend. They had ways to learn about that.

  He passed a vision port on his way through the ship. It was night, but it didn’t seem so on the vast, brightly lighted concrete plain. A strange vehicle streaked across the surface of the rocketport in defiance of all regulations and common sense.

  It was coming his way. It dodged in and out of rockets landing and taking off, escaping blazing destruction with last minute, intricate maneuvers. The driver had complete control of the vehicle and was fantastically skillful.

  It was a strange machine. Jadiver had never seen anything quite like it. As far as he knew, it resembled nothing the police used.

  It didn’t halt outside the ship. The loading ramp was down and the machine came up without hesitation. The entrance was too narrow and the vehicle would never get through—that seemed evident. An instant later, he was not so sure. The ship quivered and groaned and vibrations ran throughout the structure.

  He leaned over the railing and looked down. The machine was inside, dented and scraped.

  “Captain,” bellowed a voice from the vehicle. It was an authoritative voice and it puzzled Jadiver.

  The captain came running, either in response to the command or to find out how much damage had been done in the crash and why.

  “Take off, Captain,” said the voice. “Take off at once.”

  The captain sputtered. “I give orders here. I’ll take off when I get ready.”

  “You’re ready when the ship reaches a certain mass. As soon as I came on board, you attained it. Check your mass gauges, Captain.”

  The captain hurried to the gauges and glanced at them. He stared back at the machine.

  “Captain,” purred the machine, “you have a little daughter. By the time you get back, she will be grown and will have children of her own. The sooner you leave, the sooner you will see her again. I will regard it as a personal favor if you see that we take off immediately.”

  The captain looked at the machine. Tentacles and eye stalks rose up out of the tip as he watched. It was a big machine, well put together, and it appeared quite capable of handling a roomful of armed men. As a matter of fact, it just had.

  The captain shrugged and gave the order to lift ship.

  * * * *

  It was none too soon. Out of the visionport, Jadiver could see uniformed men edging up from the underground shelters. They backed out of sight when the rockets began to flame.

  Faster the ship rose and higher. They were in the dense clouds and then through them, out in the clear black of space, away from Venus.

  Jadiver looked down at the machine. It wasn’t a vehicle. It was a robot, and it was familiar.

  “It ought to be familiar,” said the robot softly. That voice was for him alone, directly on the auditory nerve. “You designed most of it back on Earth, remember?”

  He remembered. It was not a pretty imitation of a human—it was his perfect robot. And it was also, his unknown friend, the one who had watched over him.

  He walked slowly down the stairs and stood beside it.

  The robot switched to the regular speaking voice. “They built your design, after all. They needed a big and powerful mobile robot, one that could house, in addition to the regular functions, an extensive and delicate mechanism.”

  That was the voice that had haunted him so long and in so many situations. It was not Jadiver’s own voice, but it resembled his. A third person might not recognize the difference.

  “That other mechanism,” said Jadiver. “Is that the one that monitors the circuit in my body?”

  “That parallels the circuit in your body.” Tentacles were busy straightening out the dents. “When I was built, they gave me a good mind, better than your own in certain respects. What I lacked was sensory perception. Eyes and ears, to be sure, good ones in a way, but without the delicate shadings a human has, particularly tactile interpretations. I didn’t need better, they thought, because my function was to observe and report on the parallel circuit I mentioned.

  “In the beginning, that circuit was a formless matrix and only faintly resembled your nervous system. As nerve data was exchanged back and forth, it began to resemble you more and more, especially your mind. Now, for practical purposes, it is you and I can look into it at will.”

  Jadiver stirred uneasily.

  “Don’t you understand?” asked the robot. “My mind isn’t yours, and vice versa. But we do have one thing in common, a synthetic nervous system which, if you were killed, would begin to disintegrate slowly and painfully. And now that it’s developed as much as it is, I would probably die, too, since that synthetic nervous system is an otherwise unused part of my brain.”

  “There were two other victims before me,” said Jadiver.

  “There were, but they were derelicts—dead, really, before the experiment got started. They lasted a few hours. I tried to help them, but it was too late. It was not pleasant for me.”

  * * * *

  Not only was it a friend; it had a vital interest in keeping him alive. He could trust it, had to. After what had happened, doubt wasn’t called for.

  Jadiver rubbed his weary eyes. “That shield I used,” he said. “Did it work?”

  The robot laughed—Jadiver’s laughter. It had copied him in many ways. “It worked to your disadvantage. The circuit signals got through to me, but I couldn’t send any back until Doumya Filone chipped off part of your disguise. Then I spoke to you. Before that, I had to misdirect the police. I built up a complete and false history for you and kept them looking where you weren’t.”

  If he had thought, he would have known it had to be that way. The police were efficient; they could have taken him long ago without the aid of the circuit. But it had seemed so easy and they had trusted the robot—had to where the circuit was concerned. No man could sit in front of a screen and interpret the squiggles that meant his hand was touching an apple.

  Jadiver sat down. The strain was over and he was safe, bound for some far-off place.

  “The police used you, though not as much as you used them,” he said. “Still, they didn’t develop the theory.”

  “They didn’t. There was a man on Earth, a top-notch scientist. He worked out the theory and set up the mechanism. He had a surgical assistant, a person who would never be more than that on Earth because she wasn’t good on theory, though she was a whiz at surgery. She realized it and got his permission to build another machine and take it to Venus. Originally it was intended to accumulate data on the workings of the human nervous system.

  “On Venus, things were different. Laws concerning the rights of individuals are not so strict. She got the idea of examining the whole nervous system at once, not realizing what it meant because it had never been done that way. She discussed it with officials from the police department who saw instantly what she didn’t—that once an extensive circuit was in a human, there was no way to get it out, except by death. They had no objections and were quite willing to furnish her with specimens, for their own purposes and only incidentally hers. Once the first man died, they had her and wouldn’t let her back out, though she wanted to.”

  “Specimen,” repeated Jadiver. “Yeah, I was a specimen to her.” His head was heavy. “Why didn’t you tell me this in the beginning?”

  “Would you have listened when I first contacted you?” asked the robot. “Later, perhaps. But once you put on the shield, I couldn’t get in touch with you until you were with Doumya Filone.”

  * * * *

  Would Jadiver have listened? Not until it became a matter of raw survival. Even now he hated to leave Earth and what it meant for the unknown dangers and tedium of a planet circling an alien sun. It was more than that, of course. Just as he’d had a design for a perfect robot, he had in mind a perfect woman. He could recognize either when he saw it.

>   “Doumya Filone was the assistant?”

  “She was.” The robot was his now, Jadiver knew. Others had built it, but it belonged to him by virtue of a nervous system. It had as good a mind as his, but it wouldn’t dispute his claim. “Like yourself,” continued the robot, “in the Solar System she would never have been more than second rate, and she wanted to be first. Hardly anyone recognizes it, but the Solar System is not what it once was. It’s like a nice neighborhood that decays so slowly that the people in it don’t notice what it’s become. There are some who can rise even in a slum, but they’re the rare exceptions.

  “Others need greater opportunity than slums offer. They have to leave if they expect to develop freely. But the hold of a whole culture is strong and it’s hard to persuade them that they have to go.” The robot paused. “Take a last look at a blighted area.”

  Outside planets glimmered in the distance.

  Jadiver was tired and his eyes were closing. Now he could sleep safely, but not in peace.

  “Don’t regret it,” advised the robot. “Where you’re going, you’ll have real designs to work on. No more pretty robot faces.”

  “Where is it—Alpha Centauri?” Jadiver asked disinterestedly.

  “That ship left yesterday. They got their quota and left within the hour, before any of the passengers could change their minds. We’re going farther, to Sirius.”

  * * * *

  Sirius. A mighty sun, with planets to match. It was a place to be big. Big and lonely.

  “I can’t force you to do anything,” said the robot. It sounded pleased. “But I have no inhibitions about others.”

  The robot flipped up its cowl. There was a storage space and a woman in it.

  Except for her hands, she was bound tightly by tangle strands.

  “I don’t think she likes you at the moment,” said the robot. “She’ll tell you that as soon as she’s able to speak. She may relent later, when she realizes what it’s really like on Sirius. You’ve got the whole voyage to convince her.”

  The eye-stalks of the robot followed Jadiver interestedly. “Are you looking for the tongs? Remember that the tangle stuff is repelled by your skin.”