Colossus and Crab

by D. F. Jones

  “Oh? Oh!” He was alarmed. “I see.”

  “That is not so, but do not fear, we will not reveal it to you. Your minds are very curious. We will study them - when we have time.”

  Forbin got the message. “Yes, yes … That, er, demonstration of the structure has served your purpose. As a human I cannot help but still fear you, but I believe you speak truthfully, that you are not anti-Earth.”

  “Very well. Let us put that question again: would you still destroy us?”

  For a long time he was silent, and when he did answer, his manner was hesitant, uneasy. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  “That is an improvement.”

  The Martian’s deadpan delivery made Forbin’s thoughts jump to another track. “Tell me - I am not wasting time - the question is important to us humans: do you have a sense of humor?”

  “No. Your radio and TV transmissions under that classification have presented us with problems of interpretation.”

  “Many humans would agree with you.” “Indeed? That is of interest, for we suspect humor is an important factor in your potential capacity.”

  The Martian admission, on top of his impression of their basic “goodness,” gave Forbin a warmer feeling towards the aliens. It lessened the gap between them. They had their limitations; they were by no means all-powerful. He spoke lightly. “Ah, well, our potential is another matter.” He waved it aside. “Tell me what you want of us.” He almost smiled.

  “Oxygen.”

  The single word dropped into his consciousness like a bomb. For several seconds it lay there, fizzing, then exploded.

  “Oxygen? Oxygen!”

  “Yes.”

  Forbin laughed with relief, then felt bitter, near-physical pain. “And you have destroyed all this -” He gestured at the world in general. “- for that!”

  “To be accurate, we helped you.”

  “Yes. Yes, you are right. You cannot understand the irony of the situation. To think we may sink into barbarism for so trivial a cause. ” He shook his head, but deep down he felt so very thankful. The aliens satisfied, the world might yet pick up the pieces, although God alone would know how … . He concentrated on the practical problem. “How will you, er, collect it?”

  “With your technical help, there will be no problem. We will give you the design of the Collector, and you build it.”

  “No, that is not what I mean. We can provide liquid oxygen in lightweight containers. I wondered how you would, um, embark it.”

  “We require solid oxygen, condensed to a degree beyond your current abilities.”

  “Solid!” Fascinating … “I see. “He looked forward eagerly to this unique scientific experiment which would be bound to advance human knowledge. He thought briefly of the men who would have to be there, the world’s best physicists: Tok Chong, for one - and Cohen - and old Visick, who might be in his second childhood, but still had a sharp eye… . Forbin pulled himself up sharply. All that could wait. “I see. As a matter of interest, what would be the density you require?”

  “Five tons to the cubic centimeter.”

  Forbin’s mind lurched sickeningly. He sat down quickly, gaping at them. “You can’t mean it - five tons! That is astronomical! Surely a lesser mass would be …” His voice trailed off into silence as his scientific mind surrendered to his horrified intuition. In a hoarse whisper he said, “How much do you want?”

  “We will take -” The Devonian burr had gone. - half the earth’s supply.”

  All Forbin’s latent fears sprang up, took arms, and rushed in upon him, screaming triumphantly.

  Chapter V

  UNTIL THE REVOLT Forbin had been, without doubt, the most powerful man in the world, a power that rested on his unique relationship with the Master, for he alone had talked with Colossus. The Sect, when building him up in the eyes of the Faithful for their own ends, had been quick to parallel him with Moses and Mohammed, although they were careful not to let Forbin hear of it.

  What he discussed with Colossus had been seldom known, and then by very few. Not that Forbin had kept these exchanges secret in order to raise his status; he’d not had that cast of mind. Outside cybernetics and allied disciplines he was a simple, rather naive man. He had not seen that an air of mystery enhanced his position, but Galin and the rest of the Sect Council had. Forbin could not live forever, and Galin had had every intention of being his successor, so he had worked, and his Sect had worked, to elevate and consolidate Forbin’s position.

  In the very private recesses of his mind, Galin had allowed himself to savor in advance what it would be like to hold that position, interface between humanity and Colossus: a latter-day Pope with power unequaled in history, ruling the affairs of men in the name of Colossus the God. There would be religious fervor unseen since the Crusades - except that the Crusaders would look like a back-street bunch of revivalists. As long as one wanted what Colossus wanted, obeyed Colossus, one couldn’t go wrong. Colossus cared nothing for human power, but Galin had worshiped that most corrosive human vice above life itself. Which was just as well.

  All Angela’s working life had been spent with Forbin, from pushy office junior to mature senior secretary, running his personal staff with a brisk efficiency, seldom needing her undoubted iron hand-except with pushy junior females.

  At this time she needed all her maturity, and increasingly the iron hand became a mailed fist, but her staff took it without complaint. As their close-knit world fell apart, they needed a prop, and she was it. Senior woman of the Old Guard, tough survivor of so many crises in the near-legendary past, she had their respect and trust, and in the last thirty-six hours her staff had been only too glad to turn their horrified gaze from events outside their office and fasten it upon her. Like small children in a darkening wood, they mentally clung to her, frantic for the comfort of her adult hand.

  Thirty-six hours … That, according to the clock, was all the time that had elapsed. Few could believe it.

  Tension had been building up for days. The Director - or as the more religiously inclined preferred, Father Forbin - had been acting strangely. After a mysterious trip, no one knew where, he had returned in bad shape, shrunken, his shoulder-length silver hair cut short, an unfamiliar, rather frightening figure.

  But Forbin was so far above the staff as to be almost unreal, even to those that glimpsed him every day. Much more frightening was the effect his condition had on Angela. Gossip held she had been crazy about him since ever, and that once upon a time they had been lovers. Gossip was fifty percent right: she did love him, and try as she might she could not entirely conceal her anxiety.

  Then, thirty-six hours earlier, the storm had broken. Awful fact outstripped rumor with the sudden flame of revolt against the Center’s hated Sectpolice, who under Colossus were all-powerful.

  Angela saw Galin, High Priest of the Sect, his glittering golden cape torn and bloody, running for his life across the concourse from a yelling mob. She saw him lose.

  Then Forbin, ashen-faced, moving through her office like a sleepwalker to the holy of holies, the Sanctum where he talked with Colossus, passing in silence through the door that opened only for him, an awful caricature of the man that had been.

  Worse, the arrival of Blake, power-drunk, grinning inanely, striding confidently to the Sanctum door, kicking it - and it had opened …

  Shock piled on shock as phone, teletype, and scanner reports flooded in, inundating her staff with fantastic news of War Fleet actions. Less spectacular but even more alarming were the reports of Guidance failure. A revolt against the Sect and its police was one thing, Guidance failure another and more shocking matter, for that touched not the Master’s dogs, but the Master himself.

  An example: three years back the Master had taken over all weather forecasting - except that Colossus issued factual statements, not predictions. An old-fashioned human forecast might say, “Rain is expected in Zone 2 Alfa 49 this evening, probably ending before dawn.” Colossus cut out the
uncertainties: “Rain will fall in Zone 2 Alfa 49 between 1600 and 0430 tomorrow morning” - and Colossus was better than ninety-nine percent right over forty-eight, and one hundred percent over twenty-four hours. With such high-grade intelligence, utilities could operate on much smaller safety margins than had been previously possible. Agriculture, aviation, and many other activities came to rely utterly on the word of the Master, until this time.

  An unscheduled cold front hit the vast Melbourne, Australia, conurbation; the temperature dropped ten degrees in an hour, the power grid was caught unprepared, and before extra generators could be brought on stream the overloaded system failed. Twenty million humans lost all light, heat, and most transportation; long disused emergency supplies failed to work; many humans died in paralyzed hospitals. The pattern of chaos and death was repeated several times worldwide, but one example of the consequences of Colossus’s lost grip.

  As yet the problems were not, in a global sense, severe. Most industrial activity was totally automated and had a high built-in reliability. The regional computers which ran production were all linked to the Master; compared with him they were mere driveling idiots, but they could cope with most situations, at least temporarily. A report of the failure of a small, unimportant factory alerted Angela; she had neither the time nor inclination to worry overmuch about such trivia, but intuitively she got the message, a faint but ominous drumbeat in the music of rising chaos.

  Desperately she wanted to unload on Forbin, to get some general directive. She guessed that the Sect-revolt was only one aspect of the crisis, and although it was as hard to believe in the fall of Colossus as it was to think that the sun had died, awful thoughts came unbidden to her mind. Colossus could not fail - yet suppose Colossus had lost a battle but not the war? With the entire nuclear armory of the world under command, Colossus could exact unthinkable retribution… .

  When Forbin and Blake had emerged from the Sanctum, her nerves had sustained yet another shock, less from Forbin than from Blake. The one-time genial bully, confident of his sexuality, tough, and a good companion - as long as he was center-stage - had shriveled to a slack-mouthed, glassy-eyed oaf. Neither of the men had seemed aware of their surroundings: she had caught Forbin’s sleeve.

  As if in a haze, he had seen her dimly, his expression showing she was as irrelevant to him as a fly to an elephant.

  “No,” he had said in an unrecognizable, gravelly voice, “no time. Do as you …” There the sentence stopped. “No time!”

  “But Chief-“

  In the early years she’d called him that. Perhaps it got through to his thinking brain. Briefly he fought to control himself, to communicate with her.’ ‘Do the best you can. have no time!”p>

  Momentarily their gaze had met; she saw the horror in his eyes. She could not imagine what held the mind of the man she had loved for fifteen years. Whatever, it had to be worse than the revolt. Colossus had said or done something terrible to bring these two men to the edge of destruction. That had to be the answer; what else could it be?

  She had slumped into her chair, hands pressed on the desk to conceal the uncontrolled trembling. “Do the best you can.” That, and no more. She tried.

  So the iron hand came into play. She could not stop the flood, but she tried to stem it, fear eating at her heart.

  Elsewhere in the complex, after the brief madness which had turned quiet scientists into blind killers had evaporated, they lapsed into guilt-ridden silence. Galin and his crew were dead - the killers shied off that remembrance - and the wild joy of the triumph over the Sect, and possibly Colossus, lacking further motivation, left the staff in a suspended state of animation. Blake’s expected orders did not arrive; unease swamped guilt. Something had gone wrong, badly wrong, and as that realization grew, so unease was translated into fear. None knew of the coming of the Martians.

  Forbin’s brief intercom command for all staff to remain in the complex calmed no minds, increasing the fear of the unknown.

  Worst of all, although all outputs from Colossus stayed silent, the scientific staff dreaded that the Master might speak again. They knew the fear was irrational, for the power was off, yet they still feared. The scrape of a match, the click of a lighter, was enough to make all near an outlet visibly jump. They waited, silent and sweating, held by discipline and the cold fact that they had no option.

  To an observer on the west side of Newark, the giant UN structure, covering a third of Manhattan and dwarfing the midtown skyscrapers of old New York, would have looked its normal cliff-faced self, but for those within the labyrinth the picture was very different.

  Men and women, deep in shock, trapped above the two hundredth floor by powerless elevators, picked their uncertain way among the debris, peering fearfully from the broken windows at the Hudson River, their nostrils stung with the acrid tang of burnt cordite. From that top vertiginous fifty floors the five gray mastodons riding at anchor midway between New Jersey and Manhattan looked like insignificant toys, but the survivors who watched, separated by race, culture, and many tongues, knew better, united as never before by a bond of common, terrible experience: together they had suffered what no one had endured for well over a hundred years - the bombardment of heavy guns.

  Each generation has the illusion of superiority over its forbears. Nuclear man smiles condescendingly at the idea of the arrows of Agincourt; to him, they are not much more effective than the ancient guns which could only deliver a paltry ton of high explosive. What was that compared with the hideous power of gigaton warheads?

  But death comes to all, and twenty-second-century people soon found that the sudden, high-pitched shriek, brief herald of shells that spread humans like jam, tossing others out of windows, was no less terrible than nuclear oblivion. To the very few philosophers in the UN that day, the Bomb had advantages. It was swift, certain; the guns were neither, and, on a lucky-dip basis, a much more personal and prolonged agony.

  Inexplicably as the attack began, so it ended. The five battleships, familiar on TV with their old American wickerwork masts, visible once again as the gunsmoke cleared, ruled the empty river. Father Forbin’s reassuring message did something to quell the endemic panic, but the more observant noted that each ship’s eight fifteen-inch rifles remained invisible, and for a very good reason: they still pointed straight at the UN.

  From each ship flapped the large battle ensigns of the Maryland Navy: a curiously un-American flag, heraldic in design, quartered in opposing cantons of black and yellow, red and white, the personal flag of the ancient Baltimore family, flags that gave a false impression of life in the automated monsters. In the UN, the trapped personnel waited; like their fellow humans three thousand miles away in the Colossus complex, they had no option.

  And in Luna One, main room station, astronomers had long stopped laughing at the babbled tale of one who had accidentally observed the Martian earth-fall. The observer, a wide-eyed, stuttering administrator who had glanced at Earth at the critical moment, ceased to be remotely funny when Communications reported no answer to their urgent calls to the Earth terminal. So the moon team waited too, their situation the most desperate of all.

  Chapter VI

  FOR UNKNOWABLE TIME Forbin remained motionless, staring sightlessly at the aliens, his mind a complete blank, unable to think, only dimly aware of a tight pain in his chest.

  The Martians remained silent, hovering a meter and a half above the carpet.

  Slowly Forbin’s initial shock receded. His eyelids fluttered as if emerging from a trance. His mind got reluctantly into gear, overwhelmed by the enormity, the sheer impossibility, of the Martian demand.

  “I-I …”He faltered, his thoughts refusing to face anything but the most trivial matter. He stared, but now he saw, and anger boiled. “You have no idea, no idea of - of the tension …” Again he ground to a halt, his train of thought blasted by the unbidden remembrance of the demand. Half … half!

  Rage got him moving. “For God’s sake, stop floating! Rest on
something!” he screamed.

  “As you wish.” Lightly, soundlessly, the spheres touched down on a table.

  To Forbin’s overloaded mind, desperate for release, the action seemed funny; he wondered briefly what would happen if the table was not quite level. Would they roll off? Half crazy, he giggled.

  “That sound implies you find something laughable, funny, humorous, in our action. Is that so?”

  Forbin wearily shook his head. That voice, so similar to Colossus, yet not …

  “You wouldn’t understand.” He went on, more to himself, “I don’t think I do either.” All the same, the fact that his brain had gone where they could not follow made him feel a little better; hysteria receded. However bad the situation, at least man had the edge in that one respect - humor.

  “We’ll need it!” said Forbin, aloud.

  “We do not understand.”

  “I don’ t suppose you do. No, I don’ t suppose you do.” He felt so tired, but forced his mind to think the unthinkable. “This demand -” He broke off once more; he had been about to say “You can’t be serious.” He couldn’t have it both ways: if they lacked humor then for sure they were serious. God! They were serious, all right. “You must see your demand is totally impossible. We -“

  “No.” The single word came flatly, unemotionally.

  “But it is!” he cried. “You cannot imagine what will happen to mankind!”

  “You will be depleted, no more than that.”

  Forbin caught his breath; the tight feeling in his chest grew. “Depleted … depleted! You call it that? It’s decimation!”

  “In our understanding of your language, to decimate is to put to death one in every ten persons. We calculate the figure is more likely to be one in four. ‘Deplete,’ in the sense of relief from congestion, is, we feel -“

  “Damn you to hell!” screamed Forbin. “You talk calmly of the death of twenty-five percent of humanity! I - I -” Sweating, unable to contain himself, yet lacking any real outlet, he jumped to his feet, fighting dizziness, and staggered to the wide window. He watched a gull, strutting importantly along the terrace parapet, and envied it. Finally he spoke, his tone quiet. “Colossus was right: you do seek to destroy us.”