O Master Caliban

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  She bellowed, THAT IS ENOUGH—

  Mitzi ran out with wild hair, shrieking, “Shirvanian, you idiot! There’s a recharger in the clo—”

  Erg-Queen slapped her aside and skinned Esther, who had followed. Rolled around the corner, casters slithering, to meet Ardagh leaping from the closet, grasping in both hands a meter of steel cable, socket at one end and a tangle of frayed wires at the other. Ardagh pulled back and whacked her with it straight on. She spun.

  Ergs boiled out of the corridors, banging, wheeling, flowing in currents. They hemmed her in, butted and ground against her inviolate surface.

  MOD DAHLGREN! At full volume her voice nearly cracked the ceiling.

  Sven, Esther, Mitzi shrank against the walls, Ardagh into the closet. But the ergs left a little space around Shirvanian; he stood in their flock as a shepherd among sheep.

  STOP! DAHLGRENSSON! MACHINEMAKER! STOP! She was backed to the wall. Her arms, her ten arms went outward in full, threatening or pleading.

  Shirvanian ground his teeth, his eyes filled with tears.

  The metal clashed and whined around her. The arms rose very slowly, as slowly, it seemed, as clock hands, rose slowly to her trembling glittering crown, the blued-steel arms began to break off, one by one, the silver antennas.

  STOP! ... STOP ... ST ...

  She bowed and spun, wheeled crazily three or four times, rocked back on her rollers, and stopped.

  The ergs rumbled, buzzed, hummed. They slowed gradually, power evaporating. Shirvanian willed. They rattled, ticked for a few moments, stopped.

  * * *

  Arms crossed, Esther straddled a trimmer riding piggyback on a three-twenty at the edge of the lonely space in which Shirvanian had centered himself. She looked at Sven, at Shirvanian, at erg-Queen. Odd noises echoed down the halls in receding waves. The vault was a center of silence.

  Shirvanian sank to a squat, hugging his knees, sobbing.

  Erg-Queen stood back to the wall, claw-hands tangled in her crown.

  Esther watched the child, licked her lips, scratched under her chin. “Well, Shirvanian, she broke your bird.”

  Shirvanian’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears rolled down his dirty face and dripped off his jaws. “She was a beautiful machine,” he whispered.

  * * *

  Dahlgren writhed and bit, the clone yelped and hung on, squashing his windpipe. He saw a universe of stars, the last of his light, and through it the black shape of the female, arms out, mouth open in a split-lipped grin.

  Lights went on, fifty blazing floods, a blast of whiteness.

  Dahlgren, head bent backward, spine about to crack, saw one dark figure leaping down the flagstone steps of the slope, unzipping a jumpsuit, pulling out a red banner of cloth.

  Joshua caught the clone’s neck in the laplap, wound it in two quick twists, and yanked hard. The clone threw his arms wide and fell back.

  The female screeched and flung herself on all three.

  Erg-Dahlgren, on guard outside, watched helplessly from above.

  Joshua groped for the rivet gun; his one sickening choice was to crack her on the head with it; she was clawing at his face. The male grabbed for his ankles. Dahlgren, beneath all, was battered by flying limbs. The birds and beasts had wakened and were screeching.

  A terrifying gray shape rose into the blaze of light, stared yellow-eyed for a moment, and blinked once with translucent lids.

  “Strangers?” the serpent asked. “Us?” It slammed the back of the female’s neck with its snout and she fell over, looped a coil around the waist of the male and squeezed the breath out of him firmly.

  It looked at the dazed clones, at gasping Joshua, at Dahlgren on hands and knees shaking his head like a dog.

  “Turn off the day, Stranger,” it said. “I want to sleep.”

  Dahlgren, panting, raised his head. His eyes were red-lidded and bloodshot, his tongue swollen; blood and spittle bubbled at the comers of his mouth. “Why did you not say you would help me?”

  “Stranger, you never asked,” said the serpent.

  * * *

  Ardagh swung the length of steel flex and grinned crookedly at Mitzi. “Sometimes muscle is useful.” Then she flung it across the vault and it crashed among ergs washed against the walls, heaped in the corners. The hellish light shone dully on their carapaces.

  Shirvanian picked himself up slowly. “Dahlgren’s up on third level ... with Joshua ... and the other Dahlgren.”

  Esther hopped to Sven’s shoulder and they picked their way among battered machines, clambering over some still humming or quivering monster. Silence hung in the empty air above them.

  Rracktick!

  They stopped.

  “Oh, Shirvanian!” Ardagh whispered. “What’s that?”

  Tickrrackticktick!

  Shirvanian pulled back against a metal flank; he looked like an ancient midget. He sniffled and rubbed his nose on the tatter of a sleeve. “I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know everything!”

  “We can see that, but—” Mitzi slumped. “I’m sorry ... whatever it is, I give up.”

  Shirvanian had to peel back his fingers to loosen their grip on his control. “I’m still up. Whatever it is, it’s not an erg.”

  “Something different,” Ardagh said wearily. “You said that about erg-Queen.”

  tick!

  “Behind that door,” said Esther. She hopped stalled machines as if they were stepping stones. “Office of the Statistician.”

  “Oh. I know what that is.” Sven let his breath out luxuriously. “I mean I don’t know what it is, but I know what it looks like. Come and see. This won’t take over the universe.”

  In the office, the cabinets had been knocked over and the files rifled, but the thing clicking in one corner had been left alone, perhaps because it was a machine.

  On a pedestal under a glasstex bell, it was a collection of knobs, rods, ratchets and spindles made of brass that had softened to the look of gold; it seemed archaic and useless, someone’s long-ago concept of a perpetual-motion machine. Fine wire claws rose out of its floor and turned the knobs. rracktick!

  “I remember that,” said Esther. “Stats was a bit of a nut. He had all those gears and rods machined and rigged to a little generator. You could even run it on a penlight cell. I never knew what it was.”

  Shirvanian went round it and pinged the bell with his fingernail. “It’s a model of Babbage’s Difference Engine. The only part that was ever built of just about the first computer anybody ever thought of.”

  “Are you going to turn it off too?” Mitzi asked.

  “What for? It’s done nothing for six hundred and fifty years and I don’t see why it shouldn’t go on doing it.”

  Dahlgren was resting on the bed in his old infirmary room, a chaotic mess from his struggles with the servo. Erg-Dahlgren was waiting at the doorway.

  “Dahlgren, your son is coming, with Esther. And the children.”

  Dahlgren rose, pulled off his boots and then his pajamas, used the pajamas for rags to wipe the dirt off his boots. Erg-Dahlgren gave him the uniform. He put it on and combed his hair and beard; there were bits of bark clinging to them.

  He got up stiffly.

  “Shall I help you, Dahlgren?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  In the hall, Sven was standing, arms folded to front and back. A muscle twitched in his cheek. Shirvanian was leaning on the wall, about to keel over, and Esther squatted nearby, arms wrapped about herself, staring with calm black eyes. The girls were hugging Joshua, who had a thick lip and a scabbed nose.

  Dahlgren held out his hands. Sven, arms unlocked, came forward and took them in all four of his own.

  “Sven ...” He had hardly a voice. “It is good to see you alive and
well.”

  Sven licked his lips and whispered, “I am glad to be with you again, Father.”

  While erg-Dahlgren was standing bemused at this exchange, Esther exploded. She threw arms wide and in one leap hooked her legs over Dahlgren’s shoulders, so that he nearly fell over, slapped his cheeks hard with both hands, and plunged her fingers into his hair and began to scratch his scalp.

  Dahlgren threw back his head and laughed till the tears ran, and pulled her face down by the ears to kiss her.

  * * *

  “You cannot sleep yet, Shirvanian,” Dahlgren said. “We cannot sleep. The live machines must be called in, all the ones at the factories, the ship’s engines shut off, the reactors turned down—”

  “I sent—” Shirvanian yawned, “—trimmers to pick out erg-Queen’s transmitter, hook it into the radio ... start repairing the transformers ... you can broadcast on her frequency ... anything you like ... in a couple of hours ... trimmers’ll show you ... where the mike is ...” He went over in a ninety-degree arc and Esther caught him before he hit.

  “Get the child a bed, man,” she told Dahlgren. “Get us all beds. For that kind of talk there’s all the time in the world.”

  As Shirvanian lost consciousness, several hundred ergs woke, whined and rumbled aimlessly for hours, a congregation of ghosts.

  But at hour 19:17 the count stopped.

  * * *

  Erg-Queen stood in the vault. She had neither transmitter nor power cells, her sensors were dead eyes, her arms curved out like cup-hooks, Around her the broken shells of machines had been pushed against walls and into corners,

  She was left silent and alone in the center of the space where Dahlgren had crawled and eaten off the dirty floors.

  SHIRVANIAN HAD nightmares; he screamed and muttered. Esther crawled into bed with him, turned the light on, and clasped his grimacing face. “Hey, Shirvanian!” she said. “Pleasant dreams.”

  Shirvanian opened his eyes wide. “Where am I?”

  “Workers’ quarters. A bit dusty, otherwise in good order.”

  He raised his head and looked around. His chest heaved in a sigh. “It’s all over.”

  “Ayeh.”

  “I have nothing to do now.”

  She sniggered. “A tragedy. I imagine Dahlgren will find you something.”

  He turned his face into the pillow. “You don’t understand ... everything I’ve done—”

  “Saving our lives?”

  “I don’t mean that, nobody will care about that. What I did before ... outworld—and taking the ship.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Well,” Esther pinched her lip. “You could get hold of the erg ship and its crew, and head off for parts unknown. I’m sure that wouldn’t be beyond you.”

  “You’re laughing at me! Everybody does!”

  “No, Shirvanian, I’m only talking nonsense to get your mind off those nightmares—and any others you might make for yourself. If you really want to know what to do, Shirvanian, I think you should get that goddam tattoo off. Tattoos don’t belong on people.” His lip flared in a pout. “I know what you’re thinking. You could tell me something. Yes, I realize I caused tKlaa’s death by cutting off the signaler. I shouldn’t have done that, and I guess I should thank you for not telling me. But it was something like a tattoo, it was on a chain, and I don’t like that either. Tattoos or chains.”

  He sniffed again, and in a few minutes had drifted off. She hunched on the bed and stared at his pale battered face. His eyelashes were long and thick. Beautiful lashes. She pinched one of his cheeks, very gently, and then the other. Small pink flushes appeared on them. A little improvement. She turned off the light.

  * * *

  Breakfast was a tasteless scrounged meal, and eating with Dahlgren made it an uneasy one.

  He had an odd way of eating, head turned slightly aside, one shoulder a bit hunched forward. This physical attitude, from one point of view, was that of a haughty man who shunned company; from another, the manifestation of great diffidence. He would have seemed impossibly forbidding if Esther had not had her feet hooked on his chairback, her knees resting on his shoulder blades and her arms clasped loosely around his neck.

  “Did you talk to Barrazan Four?” Ardagh asked timidly.

  “Only to the spaceport.” He glanced at her through his brows. “I had to tell them that you four were alive and safe, otherwise it would have been cruel to your parents.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “After they recovered somewhat from the shock, they thought I was a bit crazy, but they will relay a message to GalFed Central. Esther,” he pulled her hands away gently, “I am not itching ... did you expect the Triskelians to come for you and drag you off in fetters?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Running away from the Order is not one of the major crimes. It is usually committed by stowing away.”

  “Yes.” Joshua ripped his bread savagely. “And we had to steal a ship.”

  Dahlgren shrugged. “Ships have gone out of order. Barrazan Five is much closer to Four than Two is. There is a point at which it is possible that a ship bound for Two and going awry might be closer to Five than to either Two or Four, and might choose to land here. It has happened once or twice before.”

  “Doctor Dahlgren,” Ardagh said, “are you suggesting that we lie?”

  Mitzi sniffed, “Now you’re pushing it!”

  “I am not!” His voice was so harsh that Ardagh shrank. “I am saying that Shirvanian may be very powerful now, but I do not know how powerful he was aboard that ship, though the suggestion may be a blow to his vanity. You wanted it to go astray, but the wish and the actuality are not necessarily the same. I can’t tell what you did to the ship or whether you did it, and I doubt that anyone else can, since the ship does not now exist. You have moral obligations and you have legal rights. Tell the truth and let hell freeze.” They ate in silence for a few minutes. Dahlgren picked up a spoon and turned it between thumb and fingers. He said in a lower voice, “If it is necessary, if my word is worth anything, I will testify for you. I owe you very much, very much thanks ...”

  “That’s all over.” Ardagh’s voice had tightened. “What’s coming ...”

  “Oh, Ardagh! What can I say? You have everything you need to do anything you want. The universe does not depend on one medical school. Shirvanian has done so much good for people in such a short time—will he really become a master criminal among his machines? Perhaps he will learn to work with both people and machines. Mitzi—who does what she pleases—I hope she will not waste herself. As for you, Joshua, from what Sven has told me I believe a good lawyer could take you out of both the Triskelian Order and the Space Academy. But if you ever choose to go into space, the Service has ecobiology branches where you can very nearly write your own ticket. Your father can hardly object, and you can—you can avoid the acrimonious exchanges that embitter so many people ... Now will you kindly pass the preserves, or whatever passes for preserves on this table?”

  * * *

  “Where are you going, Esther?” Ardagh asked.

  “Down to base level.”

  “What for?”

  “Come on and I’ll show you.”

  The light was brighter; one transformer had been repaired. A narrow track had been cleared among the stalled ergs.

  Esther jumped up and caught a ten-centimeter steel ring fixed to the ceiling. “And there,” she pointed, “there’s another, a few meters down. All the way around!” Esther whooped, reached and grabbed the next ring and the next, swinging, yipping, brachiated the circle of the corridor, voice echoing crazily. Two minutes later she dropped beside Ardagh. “Exercise for growing gibbons.”

  “Will you stay here, Esther?”

  “I’ll stay with the Dahlgrens till Sven goes off on his own, and t
hen with Dahlgren. He ought to have someone around who likes him besides erg-Dahlgren.”

  “Sven—”

  “Sven loves him, but he has his own feelings and ideas, as he should; he’s not mine any more either. And I ...” Her eyelids thickened and reddened. As Mitzi had once done she put her fingers to her mouth and spoke out to an empty space. “Topaze is not a mate ... Yigal is dead ...” She grabbed the ring again with her shrill morning cry and scalloped away.

  * * *

  “My God!” Mitzi yelped. “Where’d you get that?”

  Joshua was wearing a well-tailored coverall of burnt-orange raw silk, with slubs. He looked handsome.

  “Clothier took a liking to me,” he muttered. His mouth was still a bit swollen.

  “Hey, now I can get rid of these goddam filthy rags!”

  “It’s got to like you,” Joshua said carefully. “If you speak to it nastily its feelings get hurt. It’s got a mean way with a heat sealer, so watch out!”

  “Ha,” Mitzi went away with a look in her eye and a couple of hours later turned up in something dark and misty that seemed to have raindrops woven into it. Very decadent and very attractive.

  Ardagh sighed in envy and resignation and lurched off to be sewn into red-green shot silk that made her wholesome as an apple.

  * * *

  “You look delicious,” Sven said.

  Ardagh grunted.

  He said stiffly, “I was trying to give you a compliment. I suppose I’m not very graceful at it, but I haven’t had much experience.”

  “I don’t mean anything. It’s—”

  “Shirvanian’s been bursting into tears every ten minutes, and you’ve got your teeth clenched. You’d think we were still—”