Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “Either the robot can take over the job or it can’t,” he said. “But we can’t wait any longer to find out.”

  He stooped suddenly and with a single powerful heave tore the box-lid open and sent it crashing back. Broome stepped up beside him and the two of them looked down on the thing that lay placidly inside, face up, passionless, its single eye unlit and as blank as Adam’s before he tasted the fruit. The front panel of its chest was open upon a maze of transistors, infinitely miniature components, thin silver lines of printed circuits. A maze of fine wiring nested around the robot, but most of it was disconnected by now. The robot was almost ready to be born.

  “What are we waiting for?” Conway demanded harshly. “I said wake it up!”

  “Not yet, General. It isn’t safe yet. I can’t predict what might happen.”

  “Won’t it work?”

  Broome looked down at the steel mask winking with reflected lights from the panel boards above it. His face wrinkled up with hesitation. He bent to touch one finger to a wire that led into the massive opened chest at a circuit labeled “In-Put.”

  “It’s programed,” he said very doubtfully. “And yet—”

  “Then it’s ready,” Conway’s voice was flat. “You heard me, Broome. I can’t wait any longer. Wake it up.”

  “I’m afraid to wake it up,” Broome said

  The General’s ears played a familiar trick on him. I’m afraid I’m afraid . . . He couldn’t make the voice stop echoing. But fear is what all flesh is heir to, he thought. Flesh knows its limitations. It was time for steel to take over.

  Pushbutton warfare used to look like the easy way to fight. Now man knows better. Man knows what the weakest link is himself. Flesh and blood. Man has the hardest job of all, the job of making decisions on incomplete data. Until now, no machine could do that. The computers were the very heartbeat and brain-pulse of pushbutton war, but they were limited thinkers. And they could shrug off responsibility with an easy, “No answer insufficient data.” After which it was up to man to give them what more they needed. The right information, the right questions, the right commands. No wonder the turnover in generals was so high.

  So the Electronic Guidance Operator was conceived. The General looked down at it, lying quietly waiting for birth. Ego was its name. And it would have free will, after a fashion. The real complexity of the fabulous computers lies not in the machines themselves, but in the programing fed into them. The memory banks are no good at all without instructions about how to use the data. And instructions are extremely complex to work out.

  That was going to be Ego’s job from now on. Ego had been designed to act like the human brain, on only partial knowledge, as no machine before had ever done. Flesh and blood had reached their limits, Conway thought. Now was the hour for steel to take over. So Ego lay ready to taste the first bite of the apple Adam bit. Tireless like steel, resourceful like flesh, munching the apple mankind was so tired of munching

  “What do you mean, afraid?” Conway asked.

  “It’s got free will,” Broome said. “Don’t you see? I can’t set up free will and controls. I can only give it one basic order win the war. But I can’t tell it how. I don’t know how? I can’t even tell it what not to do. Ego will simply wake like well, like a man educated and matured in his sleep, waking for the first time. It will feel needs, and act on its wants. I can’t control it. And that scares me, General.”

  Conway stood still, blinking, feeling exhaustion vibrate shrilly in his nerve ends. He sighed and touched the switch on his lapel microphone. “Conway here. Send Colonel Garden to Operation Christmas. And a couple of MPs.”

  Broome burst into very rapid speech. “No, General! Give me another week. Give me just a few days—”

  “You’ve got about two minutes,” Conway said. He thought, See how you like quick decisions. And this is only one. I’ve had five years of it. How long since I slept last? Well, never mind, never mind that. Make Broome decide. Push him. Resting!

  Broome said, “I won’t do it. No. I can’t take the responsibility. I need more time to test—”

  “You’ll go on testing till doomsday. You’ll never activate it,” Conway said.

  The door opened. The two MPs followed Colonel Garden into the room. Garden’s uniform looked sloppy, as usual. The man wasn’t built for a uniform. But the dark pouches under his eyes tempered Conway’s contempt. Garden hadn’t slept much lately, either. It was past time for all of them now Ego must pick up the burden and justify its name.

  “Arrest Broome,” Conway said. He ignored their startled looks. “Colonel, can you wake up this robot?”

  “Wake it up, sir?”

  Conway gestured impatiently. “Activate it, start it going.”

  “Well, yes, sir, I do know how, but—”

  Conway didn’t bother to listen. He pointed to the robot, and whatever else Garden was saying became a meaningless yammer in his ears. Forty-eight hours, he thought-time enough to test it before the attack comes, if we’re lucky. And it had better work. He pressed thumb and finger to his eyes again to keep the room from swinging in slow, balancing circles around him.

  Broome from the far end of nowhere said, “Wait, General! Give me just one day more! It isn’t—”

  Conway waved his hand, not opening his eyes. He heard one of the MPs say something, and there was a brief scuffle. Then the door closed. The General sighed and opened his eyes.

  Garden was looking at him with the same doubt Broome had shown. Conway scowled and the other man turned quickly to the box where the robot lay. He stooped as Broome had done and touched with one finger the wire cord still leading into the spot marked “In-Put.”

  “Once this is detached, sir, he’s on his own,” he said.

  “The thing has its orders,” the General said briefly. “Go on, do something.”

  There was a little pinging noise as Garden neatly detached the cord. He closed the steel plate that sealed Ego’s inwards. He ran his hands around the steel limbs to make sure all the nest of wires was clear. Then he got up and crossed to the instrument panel.

  “Sir,” he said.

  Conway didn’t answer for a moment. He was rocking just perceptibly to and fro, heel and toe, like a tower beginning to totter. He said, “Don’t tell me anything I don’t want to hear.”

  Garden said composedly, “I don’t know just what to expect, sir. Will you tell me as soon as the robot starts to respond? Even the slightest—”

  “I’ll tell you.” Conway looked down at the placid blind face. Wake up, he thought. Or else don’t. It doesn’t really matter. Because we can’t go on like this. Wake up. Then I can sleep. Or don’t wake up. Then I can die.

  The round, flat cyclopean lens of the robot’s eye began to glow softly. In the same moment a rising hum of power from the instrument panel made the lights dim, and all the reflections shimmering from Ego’s steel surfaces paled and then burned strong again as auxiliary switches kicked in. One by one the lights on the panel went out. The quivering needles rocked to and fro at zero and quieted.

  The robot stared blankly up at the ceiling, not moving.

  Conway, looking down, thought, Now it’s your turn. I’ve gone as far as a man can go. Take over, robot. Move!

  The robot’s whole body shivered very, very slightly. The eye brightened until it sent a cone of light straight up at the ceiling. Without the slightest warning it lifted both arms at once out of the box and smashed its metal hands together with a clang that made both men jump. Conway gasped with surprise and released tension. Uselessly he said, “Garden!”

  Garden opened a switch and the singing whine of power died. The robot was motionless again, but this time, like an effigy on a tomb, it lay with palms pressed together hard. The shivering began again and rhythmic clicking sounds like many clocks ticking out of phase could be heard faintly from deep inside the big steel cylinder of the body.

  “What’s happening?” Conway asked, whispering without knowing why. “What made it
do that?”

  “Activation,” Garden said, also whispering. “It—” He paused, cleared his throat self-consciously, and spoke aloud. “I’m not too familiar with this, Sir. I suppose the basic tensions are setting up. They’ll be relieved through energy transformation of some kind or other, depending on the homeostatic principle that Broome—”

  From the box and the supine robot a strange, hollow voice spoke in a kind of howl. “Want. . . .” it said painfully, and then seemed to stop itself short. “Want ” it said again, and ceased abruptly.

  “What is it?” Conway wasn’t sure whether he was addressing Ego or Garden. The sound of the voice frightened him. It was so mindless, like a ghost’s, flat and hollow.

  “There’s a speaker in its chest,” Garden said, his own voice a little shaken. “I’d forgotten. But it ought to communicate better than this. It the Ego—” Garden gestured helplessly. “Some kind of block, I should think.” He stepped forward and bent over the box, looking down. “You want something?” he asked awkwardly, sounding foolish. Conway thought what an ineffectual man he was. But at least the robot was awake now. Surely in a little while it would be adjusted, ready to take over

  Well, maybe they could all relax a little, after that. Maybe Conway could even sleep. A sudden panic shook him briefly as he thought, What if I’ve forgotten how to sleep? And exhaustion rolled up over him like water washing over a man of sand, relaxing and crumbling away the very components of his limbs. In just a moment I’ll be free, Conway thought. When Ego takes over. I’ve made it. I haven’t gone mad or killed myself. And now I won’t have to think any more. I’ll just stand here, without moving. I won’t even lie down. If gravity wants to pull me down, that’s up to gravity

  Garden, bending over the box, said again, “What is it you want?”

  “Want ” Ego said. And suddenly the prayerful hands flashed apart, the four-foot arms flung wide like shining flails. Then it lay motionless again, but Colonel Garden was no longer leaning over the box. Conway saw, with hazy detachment, that Garden was crumpling down against the wall. The flail had caught him across the side of the neck, and he lay with his head at an angle like a jointed doll, more motionless now than the robot.

  Moving slowly, Conway touched the switch of his lapel microphone. The silence hummed receptively. There was a long interval while he couldn’t quite remember his name. But presently he spoke.

  “General Conway here. Bring Broome back to Operation Christmas.”

  He looked down at the robot. “Wait a while,” he said. “Broome will know.”

  The robot’s arms bent. The steel hands closed upon the sides of the box, and with a shriek of metal parting from metal it ripped the box apart.

  Now it was born. Born? Untimely ripped, Con way thought. Untimely ripped I suppose I was wrong. What next?

  Ego rose upright, eight feet tall, solid as a tower, and like a walking tower it moved. It moved straight forward until the wall stopped it. Slowly it turned, its cone of vision sweeping the room, its motions at first jerky and uneven, but becoming smoother and surer with the warming-up process of the newly activated machine. It was still trembling just perceptibly, and the ticking rose and fell inside it, drew out in slow series, quickened, burst into rapid chatter, slowed again. Sorting, accepting, rejecting, evaluating the new-found world which was now the robot’s burden

  It saw the wall of control panels which had activated it. The beam of its sight swept the panels briefly, and then with a burst of surprising speed it rushed across the room toward the panels. Its hands danced over the plugboard, the switches, the dials.

  Nothing happened. The panels were dead.

  “Want ” said the hollow, inhuman cry from Ego’s reverberating chest. And with two sweeps of the steel hands it sheared cleanly off the board all the projecting globes and dials and switches. It sank steel fingers into the sockets and ripped the plating off. It wound both hands deep into the colored wiring inside and ripped great handfuls out in a sort of measured frenzy.

  “Ego!” Conway said.

  It heard him. It turned, very fast. The bright gaze bathed him for a moment. He felt cold as it held him in its focus, as if a mind the temperature of steel were locked with his. He could almost feel the touch of the newfledged, infinitely resourceful brain.

  The light of its gaze passed him and saw the door. It dismissed Conway. It surged forward like a tank and hit the door flatly with its chest, cracking the panels in two. With a single motion it swept the wreckage away on both sides and rolled forward through the splintered frame.

  By the time Conway reached the door the robot was a long way off down the underground corridor, moving faster and faster, dwindling toward the vanishing point like a shrinking drop of quicksilver. Going somewhere.

  “General Conway, sir,” somebody said.

  He turned. The two MPs flanked Abraham Broome who was craning forward trying to see the wrecked instrument panel from between them.

  “Dismissed,” Conway said. “Come in, Broome.”

  The old man went past him obliviously, stooped over Garden’s body, shook his head.

  “I was afraid of something like this,” he said.

  Conway felt a moment of intense envy for the motionless Garden. He said, “Yes. I’m sorry. One casualty. We’ll all be casualties if Ego doesn’t work. How do we know what the other side’s doing now? Maybe they’ve got an Ego too. I made a mistake, Broome. I should have looked ahead a little further. What do we do now?”

  “What happened?” Broome was looking incredulously at the shattered wall where the instrument panels had been. “Where’s the robot now? I’ve got to know the details.”

  A communicator high on the wall coughed and then called Conway’s name. Slowly and heavily Conway’s mind tried to accept the new demands. But what the communicator said was a jumble of meaningless sounds until one word sprang out at him. Emergency.

  Attack? An alarm rang shrilly deep in his head. “Repeat,” he said wearily.

  “General Conway? A robot is destroying equipment in Sector Sub-Five. Attempts to immobilize it are failing. General Conway? A robot is destroying—”

  “All right,” Conway said. At least, this wasn’t an attack, then. Or anyway, not an attack from the enemy. “Conway here. Orders. Don’t harm the robot. Instructions follow. Stand by.”

  He looked at Broome inquiringly, realizing that the old man had been buzzing at him anxiously in meaningless words. “General, General, I’ve got to know exactly what happened—”

  “Shut up and I’ll tell you,” Conway said. “Wait.”

  He walked over to a hand basin at the wall, drew a glass of chemical-tasting water and found the tube of benzedrine pills in his pocket. It wouldn’t help much. He had been living on the stuff too long. But this ought to be the last push had to be the last and every extra ounce of stimulus helped. He could let go soon, but not yet.

  He gave Broome a concise, thirty-second summary in a falsely brisk voice. The old man stood silent, pinching his lip and gazing at Conway with a blank face, his mind obviously ranging around the abstract regions inside his head.

  “Well?” Conway asked. “What do you think? Is it running wild or isn’t it?” He wanted to reach out and shake Broome awake, but he pushed the impulse down. Once already he had forced the issue over Broome’s protest, and he had been wrong. Perhaps fatally wrong. Now he must let the old man think.

  “I believe it’s on the job,” Broome said with maddening deliberation. “I was afraid of something like this uncontrolled reaction. But the program’s built into it and I think it’s operating toward the goal we set it. One thing’s wrong, of course. It ought to communicate better. There shouldn’t be that speech block. We’ll have to find out what it wants and why it can’t tell us.” He paused and blinked up at the corn-box on the wall. “Sub-Five, didn’t they say? What’s in Sub-Five?”

  “The library,” Conway said, and they looked at each other in silence for a second. Then Conway sighed another of h
is deep, collapsing sighs and said, “Well, we’ve got to stop it, somehow, and fast. Ego’s the most important thing we’ve got, but if it tears the whole base up—”

  “Not quite the most important,” Broome said. “Have you thought what it may do next? Since the library was its first goal?”

  “What? Don’t make me guess.”

  “It seems to be hunting information. The next stop after the library might be the computers, don’t you think?”

  Conway said, “Good God,” in a flat, exhausted tone. Then he laughed a little without making a sound. He would have to jump into action in the next few moments, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He’d been a fool, of course, pushing action on the robot too soon. Without precautions. He’d gambled, and maybe he had lost. But he knew he’d still do the same if he had it to do over. The gamble wasn’t lost yet. And what alternative had he?

  “Yes,” he said. “The computers. You’re right. If it goes after them we’ll have to smash it.”

  “If we can,” Broome said soberly. “It thinks fast.”

  Wearily Conway straightened his shoulders, wondering whether the benzedrine was going to take hold this time. He didn’t feel it yet, but he couldn’t wait.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get going. We know our jobs. Mine’s to immobilize Ego, unless he goes for the computers. Yours find out what he wants. Get it from him before he smashes himself and us. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.” He gripped Broome’s thin arm and hurried him toward the door. On the way he touched his lapel switch and said into the receptive hum at his shoulder, “Conway here. I’m on my way in. Where’s the robot?”