O Master Caliban

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “Are there any others?”

  “Mutant malaria killed the parents, and the ergs got Topaze’s sister. He’s all that’s left. Come closer. Can you hear the ticking?”

  Topaze had finished the fruit and spat the pit out with a mighty ptooh. He buzzed very faintly.

  “That’s the counter. When it gets to a certain pitch in a hot zone it sets off a jolt of adrenalin, he gets scared and backs away. Goodbye, old dear!”

  Topaze rose, grunted, slung the bag over his shoulder and marched off with dignity and slow grace, the red flower bobbing behind his ear.

  “Just as well,” Esther said. “I don’t know how Sven would’ve got on with a really brainy gorilla.”

  Ardagh wondered. Sven, standing on four hands, sweating and grimacing as he paced the red and blue flecked earth ... Dahlgren didn’t play around ...

  * * *

  Yigal woke cranky as usual and drummed the floor with his hooves. A few bricks were badly cracked in his corner. “Damn.” The sun blanked out and rain drummed the roof for three seconds. “I hate east winds.”

  “Ayeh,” said Esther. “You say that every fall.”

  Mitzi pulled herself awake groaning and sat with her head on her knees. She looked sick and vulnerable, the fine bone structure of her face pale through drawn skin. Esther, who fed what moved and swabbed what didn’t, wiped her face with a wet shammy, and she swore weakly.

  “Up, up!” said Esther. “Breakfast.”

  They got the same diet as Topaze. The fruits were crisp and sweet, but the rank odor of wind from the east spoiled the flavor and worry dried the food in their mouths.

  “It’s still the same,” Koz said. “How we get out of here.”

  “Climate,” said Joshua. “Poisons, diseases, killer ergs, radiation ...” He stopped to look at his pineapple slice and licked his lips, his tongue a pink surprise on his black skin. “You brought seed from the station.”

  “Yes,” Sven said. “Corn, rice, manioc, papaya, cuttings, seedlings—”

  “Metals, tools, components—”

  “Storage foods, books ... everything else we made here.”

  “How did you carry it?”

  “We didn’t walk a hundred and fifty kilometers! Dahlgren brought us in an old transport by a brick road, one of the erg tracks.”

  “Was it an erg?”

  Esther said, “Not really. It was an old all-purpose thing Dahlgren called the Argus. He used it to truck around non-rad animals, in the station and out to here. But it had started out as a road-mender, it kept picking bricks all the way here because it was on the road, and that’s how we got this fancy floor. I guess we picked up a lot of radiation with them, but it didn’t seem to matter then.”

  “You meant the ergs had turned the reactors up and you came through all of that?” Joshua asked. “All that radiation?”

  Esther said patiently, “The bricks had the radiation. The Argus was used to carry unradiated animals. It was lead-or concrete-shielded, I don’t know which.”

  Koz said, “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know. Dahlgren went back in it.”

  Sven said in a listless voice, “When I was a kid ... I used to complain because Dahlgren wouldn’t let me play with the animals and I was bored ... so he bonded the Argus to me and let me ride around in it ...”

  “That means there’s safe vehicles somewhere,” Joshua said. “There must have been more.”

  “Don’t you realize they’d have scrapped or cannibalized it, the way they’re doing with your ship?”

  Shirvanian turned his precious box in his hands. “They may have left it alone because it was bonded to you. Then they’d have booby-trapped it.”

  Sven rapped the table. “But what good does it do you to get there? The ergs are killers, and Dahlgren’s free out among the ergs! He’s free to get off the planet! Ardagh tells me he’s reporting to GalFed Central in a few weeks.”

  “Then he’s taking the ship!” said Koz. “We’ve got to reach him!”

  “If he’s controlling killer ergs, do you think he’d care about saving you?”

  Mitzi yelled, “You don’t care about saving us! You’re playing Robinson Crusoe in your safe little hole and you don’t give a shit for anybody else!”

  Yigal tapped the table hard with one hoof. The dishes danced. “You will not speak to my friends in that manner, miss, or you will not be safe in this hole.”

  “Go easy, Yigal,” said Esther. “She’s not that wrong, Sven. You know there’s no way out. The ergs are crowding and you’ve been sitting around with a long face for half a year.”

  Sven crouched with his arms locked tightly and his face set.

  Koz sneered. “He’s scared.”

  “We’re all scared,” said Ardagh, “but he risked his life to save us ... you’ve got books, Sven.” She went to the storeroom.

  “What about them?” he asked dully.

  Ardagh’s lumbering gait was somewhat peculiar but not graceless. She came back with a fine old volume, “Gulliver’s Travels, waterproofed, very nice,” and turned to the flyleaf: “’For my son, Edvard Dahlgren, in hope that he will lead a life of study and contemplation. From his father, Sven Adolphus Dahlgren ... I wonder if Adolphus liked the Houyhnhnms.”

  “Why were you poking about in my things?”

  “Because I’m an awful snoop ... he gave you his books, the books his father gave him. He even gave you his father’s name.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “What in Holy Mother’s name are you talking about?” Koz asked.

  “Dahlgren’s his father. I’ve seen pictures ... I recognized the face.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Sven said.

  “I know, but I believe I can understand what you’re feeling. Dahlgren’s free, everybody else is dead, he may be controlling the ergs. But he saved the three of you. We have no right to ask you to put yourself in more danger, but we have to help ourselves if we can. There must be something to the man, and maybe he’ll help us.”

  “He didn’t only save me!” Sven threw out all four arms. “He made me!”

  “For an experiment, you think? For fun?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he give Esther a pair of horns and a tail with a barb in it? Don’t you think it might have been an accident?”

  “He would have aborted.”

  “What of your mother?” Joshua asked.

  “I had none. She left him before I was born. He had specimens of her ova in the banks. He did it with everybody. He was like that.”

  Esther sighed, “Sven thinks his father made him a monster out of revenge against his mother. I don’t believe it, and I can’t get the idea out of his head.”

  Sven gripped the table edge with one set of hands and covered his face with the others. “Can’t you leave me alone now? Isn’t that enough for you?”

  Mitzi spat in disgust and flung herself out the door. The others watched Sven for a moment in despair and turned away.

  There was an ear-splitting shriek from outside, and Koz jumped up. “What’s that dumb bitch done now?”

  Mitzi was backed against the red-streaked wall staring and trembling. Hopping through the cabbages was a dull gray thing so contorted it was almost formless. The lowering sky dropped a single sheet of rain, then cleared and the sun blazed orange for a moment.

  The thing, now wet silver, came closer, a machine in the shape of a bird; a bird that if it had been living matter would never have pierced the shell. One leg was much shorter than the other; it lurched. One wing was twitching weakly on the middle of its back; it had jewel eyes, and its beak clicked and chirped. An extra head lay still beside the other on a twisted neck. Well within the range of the transmitter, it still came forward, lurching and chirping. Bottled thing in a cheap circus.
Sven gagged.

  * * *

  “It’s harmless.” Shirvanian, box in hand, sat down beside it, picked up the grotesque thing and hugged it. The bird clacked, twitched, chirped in his arms.

  Esther found her voice and croaked, “That’s dangerous!”

  “No it isn’t,” said Shirvanian calmly. He hooked a fingernail under one scale, the bird gave a last twitch and collapsed. He rubbed down its scales with his sleeve.

  “Then what is it?” Ardagh whispered. “A warning?”

  “Maybe.” A warning of something cruel and ugly.

  Mitzi said through her teeth, “Get it away!”

  “Don’t be silly, it can’t hurt you.”

  “If you’ve turned off the transmitter again I’ll wring your neck,” said Esther.

  “Those ergs’d be dumb if they couldn’t make a machine bypass that old transmitter,” Shirvanian said. He picked the thing up and smelled it, put it to his ear, touched it with his tongue. The bird looked heavy; evidently his hands were strong. “You know, you people haven’t asked me anything yet, and I’m the one who’s going to be doing most of the work.”

  Koz growled, “What work did you have in mind?”

  “Catching ergs. I said I’d make them work for me.”

  Mitzi said, “God, I wish we’d shoved him out the lock.”

  The child shrugged and smirked. People talked that way when he was around. “We’ve got an erg already, haven’t we?” He held the metal bird by its two necks and stared into the jewel eyes, then set it down again and reached for his box.

  “What the devil have you got in there?”

  Shirvanian grinned. “Toys.” He unhooked and split it. Its halves were packed to the millimeter with miniature screwdrivers, set-screws, wire spools, transistor chips, coils of solder, irons, power cells, rivets, lenses of varying range, and other things to delight the heart of a child.

  Esther said, “Sven, this thing was sent to tell us we’re not safe any more.”

  “Yes.” Sven unfolded his arms and conquered his revulsion enough to come closer. “What does it expect us to do?”

  “Get scared, run away into the wilds, die.”

  “They could have done that lots of other ways.”

  “Maybe there’s something that likes to play complicated games ...” Esther poked the bird. “What are you going to do, Shirvanian?”

  “Fix it,” he said. “My way.”

  “Better bring it inside, the rain’ll get at it.” She barked with laughter. “And if any of those toys of yours fall into the cabbages they’ll give Yigal a bellyache.”

  DAHLGREN LAY on the bed in his faded hospital blues.

  It begins to clear. When it is time to report to the Sciences Council they will send erg-Dahlgren. They are clever. Not too clever for their own good, like me. He/it will not be so different from myself, what they know of me out there, little god, they say, Dahlgren-with-a-world-of-his-own. I have changed, I suppose, and what of that, one time I whined and begged? They understand only words and reasons, ergs, and when it is to their own advantage. Like me. As I was. And how different now? And who to see? I can’t live with you any more, I can’t. I know you’re not cruel, you love me, you have feelings, you’re kind in some aching offhand way that won’t show to anybody, but the inside of you isn’t worth that awful thickness of the surface, and it’s freezing me to the marrow. Thank God we didn’t have any children together, and I’m still young enough to have them ... you have nothing to say. Of course not. Something tied a knot in you, I don’t know what, but Edvard, dear, I can’t untie it ...

  Well, I am unraveled enough now, my sweet.

  * * *

  Ergs brought him to the room where erg-Dahlgren had been formed. Other-Dahlgren lay still on a table, fleshed completely now, pink and unmarked as a child. The ergs lowered over him a fine grid set in lucite. They took away Dahlgren’s pajamas and set him on a table beside the other, with a similar grid. As it lowered they injected him. Before he sank down into the black he had one weird thought, a wisp from old stories of Gothic horror: brain exchange. He had time for a twinge of amusement: they would never trust an animal, brain or body.

  * * *

  When he woke the grid was rising. Erg-Dahlgren was sitting on the other table, hands gripping the edge, legs crossed at the ankle, swinging. He grinned. He had lost his newness; his skin was yellowed, specked with age spots, lined. The ergs had mapped him: he had Dahlgren’s every mole, hair and blue vein.

  Dahlgren sat up slowly and faced him unconsciously in the same position.

  “You have guessed?” said the erg. “I am ready to take your place ... if there are women, there is nothing they would not have seen on you, even if they were to remember after so many years.”

  “I was never very good with women,” Dahlgren said dryly. “That would not be a great problem.”

  “So much the better.”

  “Why do you want my place?”

  “To do what you would do. Make worlds. Create, destroy, and own, like all men. It is what makes us different from the animals.”

  “Thank you for the lesson,” said Dahlgren.

  “My philosophy, of course, has not the depth of yours.”

  “I have no doubt you will improve on it,” Dahlgren said. “When may I expect to die?”

  “Not yet! Not yet!” Erg-Dahlgren held up a hand with the arthritic knots of the original. “I look and move like you, but I do not yet think like you—”

  “You are doing a very good imitation.”

  “Thank you. But I must be perfect—a sentiment with which I believe you would agree. In order for me to do that we will play a game.”

  “I thought we were doing that already.”

  “You see, I did not know you had a sense of humor. That is very difficult for an erg to simulate.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” said Dahlgren. “It’s a branch of the same tree that grows cruelty and the lust for power.”

  “That is good. I will remember that.” He turned his head, and Dahlgren followed the look. He had not noticed the new erg rolling in on silent casters. It was not as big as the most powerful machines, but was still much taller than he. Vaguely female in shape, somewhat conical, rather insectiform; five arms lay curved down along each flank; a rank of faceted jewel eye buttons ran down the midline; its bulblike upper end wore a crown of antennas. Dull silver in blemishless perfection, segments tiered like peplums, it gave the impression of a pampered hive queen. Dahlgren thought his mind might be slanting off again; for a moment he had the idea that erg-Dahlgren was about to call it Mother.

  YOU ARE READY TO PLAY. The voice was pure machine.

  “We must dress first,” said erg-Dahlgren. “Always look the part. Our man does not know what game yet.”

  DO YOU NOT, DAHLGREN? WHAT GAME DO YOU PLAY BUT CHESS?

  “What game is more suitable for men and machines?” erg-Dahlgren asked. He pulled on a replica of Dahlgren’s coverall.

  Dahlgren thought, they are one. No, he is her doll, her puppet. If I broke her doll she would mend him. But it had never occurred to him to attack an erg. He had chosen ergs for their superiority as carefully as he had chosen animals.

  No longer naked in the presence of his enemy, he felt stronger, and said, “You cannot force me to play chess with you.”

  “Why should we force you?” erg-Dahlgren said. “You will wish to play. I have learned the rules of your game; let me tell you mine. It does not matter who wins, because there will be no prizes. I have told you that I intend to learn how you think and act, because I am going to take your place on Earth and in the heavens. When I have learned, you will die, because you will no longer be needed. The longer you play, the longer you live. You have not much more than half a thirtyday because we must lift off by then. You should know that you have already been given a great gi
ft of time because it took nine of your years for us to learn to make me.”

  “You’ve done well,” said Dahlgren. “It took sixty-three to make me ... and four million to make Man.”

  YOU MAY NO LONGER PLAY FOR TIME, DAHLGREN. YOU WILL PLAY CHESS FOR US.

  “I have no set,” Dahlgren said.

  YOU HAVE A SET. WE KEPT IT FOR YOU.

  The wall behind the silver erg slid open. Beyond it was a brightly lit room with two chairs, a chess table Dahlgren recognized as his own—the one he had played on with Haruni—and a chessboard set with pieces.

  Dahlgren slid off the examining table and looked at it. “That’s no kind of set to play with. I can’t use that.”

  It was a showpiece, a gift his wife had had made for him in the days when she loved him. The squares of the board were ivory and bone, the pieces transparent lucite blocks, each enclosing an object: the white pawns preserved snail shells, the blacks cowries, the queens slender coral branches of red and white, the kings animal molars in different shadings with roots pointing upward like crowns, the bishops varieties of fossil trilobites, the rooks mammal phalanges, and the knights the skulls of small birds, beaks pointing upward. All earthly, all animal. Dahlgren, master of dead animals.

  “That’s not a set anyone can play with.” He smiled ruefully. “I never was a master, I lost most of my games with Haruni, and I couldn’t even find my way through this. Where’s my old Staunton?”

  Dahlgren’s copy picked up the white coral Queen, blinked at it, and set it down.

  YOU GAVE IT TO YOUR SON, said erg-Queen.

  True. Dahlgren thought of Sven, if he had survived, playing chess with Esther, their faces puckered earnestly, and Yigal, perhaps, sitting with his head resting on a bent hoof, kibitzing. Silliness. Why had he given him the set? “Yes, I remember.”

  Erg-Dahlgren said, “If you cannot play with these we can have a set machined to your specifications.”