Dark Benediction

by Walter Michael Miller

  He turned the record player off as he left the house. The girl was standing at the curb gazing down at his bicycle. She glanced at him amiably and spoke.

  “I’m glad you turned that record off, George. A man just came by and wanted to know why you played it so often. You must have been asleep.”

  Mitch started. He moistened his lips and stared at her wonderingly. “I’m not—” He feel silent for a moment, then stuttered, “You haven’t been in the house?”

  “Yes, but you were asleep in the kitchen. Did the man come talk to you?”

  “Look, I’m not—” He choked and said nothing. The dark-eyed baby was eyeing him suspiciously. He lifted the bicycle and swung a long leg across the saddle.

  “George, where are you going?”

  “Just for a little ride,” he managed to gasp.

  “On the man’s bicycle?”

  Something was twisting cruelly at his insides. He stared at the girl’s wide brown eyes for a moment. And then he said it. “Sure, it’s all right. He’s asleep—at the kitchen table.”

  Her mouth flickered open, and for an instant sanity threatened to return. She rocked dizzily. Then, after a deep breath, she straightened.

  “Don’t be gone too long, George.”

  “I won’t! Take good care of the baby.”

  He pedaled away on wings of fright. For a time he cursed himself, and then he fell to cursing the husband who had taken an easy road, leaving his wife to stumble alone. Mitch wondered if he should have stayed to help her. But there was nothing to be done for her, nothing at least that was in his power to do. Any gesture of help might become an irreparable blunder. At least she still had the child.

  A few blocks away he found another house with an intact roof, and he prepared to spend the night. He wheeled the bicycle into the parlor and fumbled for the lights. They came on, revealing a dusty room and furniture with frayed upholstery. He made a brief tour of the house. It had been recently occupied, but there was still unopened cans in the kitchen, and still crumpled sheets on the bed. He ate a cold supper, shaved, and prepared to retire. Tomorrow would be a dangerous day.

  Sleep came slowly. Sleep was full of charging ram jets in flak-scarred skies, full of tormented masses of people that swarmed in exodus from death-sickened cities. Sleep was full of babies wailing, and women crying in choking sobs. Sleep became white arms and soft caresses.

  The wailing and sobbing had stopped. It was later. Was he awake? Or still asleep? He was warm, basking in a golden glow, steeped in quiet pleasure. Something—something was there, something that breathed.

  “What—”

  “Sshhh!” purred a quiet voice. “Don’t say anything.”

  Some of the warmth fled before a sudden shiver. He opened his eyes. The room was full of blackness. He shook his head dizzily and stuttered.

  “Sshhh!” she whispered again.

  “What is this?” he gasped. “How did you get—?”

  “Be quiet, George. You’ll wake the baby.”

  He sank back in utter bewilderment, with winter frosts gathering along his spine.

  Night was dreamlike. And dawn came, washing the shadows with grayness. He opened his eyes briefly and went back to sleep. When he opened them again, sunlight was flooding the room.

  He sat up. He was alone. Of course! It had only been a dream.

  He muttered irritably as he dressed. Then he wandered to the kitchen for breakfast.

  Warm biscuits waiting in the oven! The table was set! There was a note on his plate. He read it and slowly flushed.

  There’s jam in the cupboard, and I hope you like the biscuits. I know he’s dead. Now I think I can go on alone. Thanks for the shotgun and bicycle.

  Marta.

  He bellowed a curse and charged into the parlor. The bike was gone. He darted to the bedroom. The shotgun was gone. He ran shouting to the porch, but the street was empty.

  Sparrows fluttered about the eaves. The skyline of the business district lay lonesome in the morning sun. Squirrels were rustling in the branches of the trees. He looked at the weedy lawns where no children played, the doors askew on their hinges, at a bit of aircraft wreckage jutting from the roof of a fire-gutted home—the rotting porches—the emptiness.

  He rubbed his cheek ruefully. It was no world for a young mother and her baby. The baby would fit nicely in the bicycle’s basket. The shotgun would offer some protection against the human wolf packs that prowled everywhere these days.

  “Little thief!” he growled halfheartedly.

  But when the human animal would no longer steal to protect its offspring, then its prospects for survival would be bleak indeed. He shrugged gloomily and wandered back to the kitchen. He sat down and ate the expensive biscuits—and decided that George couldn’t have cut his throat for culinary reasons. Marta was a good cook.

  He entered the city on foot and unarmed, later in the morning.

  He chose the alleyways, avoiding the thoroughfares where traffic purred and where the robot cops enforced the letter of the law. At each corner he paused to glance in both directions for possible mechanical observers before darting across the open street to the next alley. The Geigers on the lampposts were clicking faster as he progressed deeper into the city, and twice he paused to inspect the readings of their integrating dials. The radioactivity was not yet dangerous, but it was higher than he had anticipated. Perhaps it had been dusted again after the exodus.

  He stopped to prowl through an empty house and an empty garage. He came out with a flashlight, a box of tools, and a crowbar. He had no certain plan, but tools would be needed if he meant to call a temporary halt to Central’s activities. It was dangerous to enter any building, however; Central would call it burglary, unless the prowler could show legitimate reason for entering. He needed some kind of identification.

  After an hour’s search through several houses in the residential district, he found a billfold containing a union card and a pass to several restricted buildings in the downtown area. The billfold belonged to a Willie Jesser, an air-conditioning and refrigeration mechanic for the Howard Cooler Company. He pocketed it after a moment’s hesitation. It might not be enough to satisfy Central, but for the time being it would have to do.

  By early afternoon he had reached the beginnings of the commercial area. Still he had seen no signs of human life. The thinly scattered traffic moved smoothly along the streets, carrying no passengers. Once he saw a group of robot climbers working high on a telephone pole. Some of the telephone cables carried the coordinating circuits for the city’s network of computers. He detoured several blocks to avoid them and wandered on glumly. He began to realize that he was wandering aimlessly.

  The siren came suddenly from half a block away. Mitch stopped in the center of the street and glanced fearfully toward it. A robot cop was rolling toward him at twenty miles an hour! He broke into a run.

  “You will halt, please!” croaked the cop’s mechanical voice. “The pedestrian with the toolbox will please halt!”

  Mitch stopped at the curb. Flight was impossible. The skater could whisk along at forty miles an hour if he chose.

  The cop’s steel wheels screeched to a stop a yard away. The head nodded a polite but jerky greeting. Mitch stared at the creature’s eyes, even though he knew the eyes were duds; the cop was seeing him by the heat waves from his bodily warmth, and touching him with a delicate aura of radar.

  “You are charged with jaywalking, sir. I must present you with a summons. Your identification, please.”

  Mitch nervously produced the billfold and extracted the cards. The cop accepted them in a pair of tweezerlike fingers and instantly memorized the information.

  “This is insufficient identification. Have you nothing else?”

  “That’s all I have with me. What’s wrong with it?”

  “The pass and the union card expired in 1987.”

  Mitch swallowed hard and said nothing. He had been afraid of this. Now he might be picked up for vagrancy.<
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  “I shall consult Central Coordinator for instructions,” croaked the cop. “One moment, please.”

  A dynamotor purred softly in the policeman’s cylindrical body. Then Mitch heard the faint twittering of computer code as the cop’s radio spoke to Central. There was a silence lasting several seconds. Then an answer twittered back. Still the cop said nothing. But he extracted a summons form from a pad, inserted it in a slot in his chassis, and made chomping sounds like a small typesetter. When he pulled the ticket out again, it was neatly printed with a summons for Willie Jesser to appear before Traffic Court on July 29, 1989. The charge was jaywalking.

  Mitch accepted it with bewilderment. “I believe I have a right to ask for an explanation,” he muttered.

  The cop nodded crisply. “Central Service units are required to furnish explanations of decisions when such explanations are demanded.”

  “Then why did Central regard my identification as sufficient?”

  “Pause for translation of Central’s message,” said the cop. He stood for a moment, making burring and clicking sounds. Then: “Referring to arrest of Willie Jesser by unit Six-Baker. Do not book for investigation. Previous investigations have revealed no identification papers dated later than May 1987 in the possession of any human pedestrian. Data based on one hundred sample cases. Tentative generalization by Central Service: It has become impossible for humans to produce satisfactory identification. Therefore, ‘satisfactory identification’ is temporarily redefined, pending instruction from authorized human legislative agency.”

  Mitch nodded thoughtfully. The decision indicated that Central was still capable of “learning,” of gathering data and making generalizations about it. But the difficulty was still apparent. She was allowed to act on such generalizations only in certain very minor matters. Although she might very well realize the situation in the city, she could do nothing about it without authority from an authorized agency. That agency was a department of the city government, currently nonexistent.

  The cop croaked a courteous, “Good day, sir!” and skated smoothly back to his intersection.

  Mitch stared at his summons for a moment. The date was still four days away. If he weren’t out of the city by then, he might find himself in the lockup, since he had no money to pay a fine. Reassured now that his borrowed identity gave him a certain amount of safety, he began walking along the sidewalks instead of using the alleys. Still, he knew that Central was observing him through a thousand eyes. Counters on every corner were set to record the passage of pedestrian traffic and to relay the information to Central, thus helping to avoid congestion. But Mitch was the pedestrian traffic. And the counters clocked his passage. Since the data were available to the logic units, Central might make some unpleasant deductions about his presence in the city.

  Brazenness, he decided, was probably the safest course to steer. He stopped at the next intersection and called to another mechanical cop, requesting directions to City Hall.

  But the cop paused before answering, paused to speak with Central, and Mitch suddenly regretted his question. The cop came skating slowly to the curb.

  “Six blocks west and four blocks north, sir,” croaked the cop. “Central requests the following information, which you may refuse to furnish if you so desire: As a resident of the city, how is it that you do not know the way to City Hall, Mr. Jesser?”

  Mitch whitened and stuttered nervously, “Why, I’ve been gone three years. I…I had forgotten.”

  The cop relayed the information, then nodded. “Central thanks you. Data have been recorded.”

  “Wait,” Mitch muttered. “Is there a direct contact with Central in City Hall?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “I want to speak to Central. May I use it?”

  The computer code twittered briefly. “Negative. You are not listed among the city’s authorized computer personnel. Central suggests you use the Public Information Unit, also in City Hall, ground floor rotunda.”

  Grumbling to himself, Mitch wandered away. The P.I.U. was better than nothing, but if he had access to the direct service contact, perhaps to some extent he could have altered Central’s rigid behavior pattern. The P.I.U. however would be well guarded.

  A few minutes later he was standing in the center of the main lobby of the City Hall. The great building had suffered some damage during an air raid, and one wing was charred by fire. But the rest of it was still alive with the rattle of machinery. A headless servo-secretary came rolling past him, carrying a trayful of pink envelopes. Delinquent utility bills, he guessed.

  Central would keep sending them out, but of course human authority would be needed to suspend service to the delinquent customers. The servo-secretary deposited the envelopes in a mailbox by the door, then rolled quickly back to its office.

  Mitch looked around the gloomy rotunda. There was a desk at the far wall. Recessed in a panel behind the desk were a microphone, a loudspeaker, and the lens of a television camera. A sign hung over the desk, indicating that here was the place to complain about utility bills, garbage-disposal service, taxes, and inaccurate weather forecasts. A citizen could also request any information contained in Central Data except information relating to defense or to police records.

  Mitch crossed the rotunda and sat at the desk facing the panel. A light came on overhead. The speaker crackled for a moment.

  “Your name, please?” it asked.

  “Willie Jesser.”

  “What do you wish from Information Service, please?”

  “A direct contact with Central Data.”

  “You have a screened contact with Central Data. Unauthorized personnel are not permitted an unrestricted contact, for security reasons. Your contact must be monitored by this unit.”

  Mitch shrugged. It was as he had expected. Central Data was listening and speaking, but the automatics of the P.I.U. would be censoring the exchange.

  “All right,” he grumbled. “Tell me this: Is Central aware that the city has been abandoned? That its population is gone?”

  “Screening, screening, screening,” said the unit. “Question relates to civil defense.”

  “Is Central aware that her services are now interfering with human interests?”

  There was a brief pause. “Is this question in the nature of a complaint?”

  “Yes,” he grated acidly. “It’s a complaint.”

  “About your utility services, Mr. Jesser?”

  Mitch spat an angry curse. “About all services!” he bellowed. “Central has got to suspend all operations until new ordinances are fed into Data.”

  “That will be impossible, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “There is no authorization from Department of City Services.”

  He slapped the desk and groaned. “There is no such department now! There is no city government! The city is abandoned!”

  The speaker was silent.

  “Well?” he snapped.

  “Screening,” said the machine.

  “Listen,” he hissed. “Are you screening what I say, or are you just blocking Central’s reply?”

  There was a pause. “Your statements are being recorded in Central Data. Replies to certain questions must be blocked for security reasons.”

  “The war is over!”

  “Screening.”

  “You’re trying to maintain a civil status quo that went out of existence three years ago. Can’t you use your logic units to correct present conditions?”

  “The degree of self-adjustment permitted to Central Service is limited by ordinance number—”

  “Never mind!”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes! What will you do when fifty men come marching in to dynamite the vaults and destroy Central Data?”

  “Destroying city property is punishable by a fine of—”

  Mitch cursed softly and listened to the voice reading the applicable ordinance.

  “Well, they’re planning to do it anyway,”
he snapped.

  “Conspiracy to destroy city property is punishable by—”

  Mitch stood up and walked away in disgust. But he had taken perhaps ten steps when a pair of robot guards came skating out from their wall niches to intercept him.

  “One moment sir,” they croaked in unison.

  “Well?”

  “Central wishes to question you in connection with the alleged conspiracy to destroy city property. You are free to refuse. However, if you refuse, and if such a conspiracy is shown to exist, you may be charged with complicity. Will you accompany us to Interrogation?”

  A step closer to jail, he thought gloomily. But what was there to lose? He grunted assent and accompanied the skaters out the entrance, down an inclined ramp, and past a group of heavily barred windows. They entered the police court, where a booking computer clicked behind its desk. Several servo-secretaries and robot cops were waiting quietly for task assignments.

  Mitch stopped suddenly. His escorts waited politely.

  “Will you come with us, please?”

  He stood staring around at the big room—at the various doorways, one leading to traffic court, and at the iron gate to the cellblock.

  “I hear a woman crying,” he muttered.

  The guards offered no comment.

  “Is someone locked in a cell?”

  “We are not permitted to answer.”

  “Suppose I wanted to go bail,” he snapped. “I have a right to know.”

  “You may ask at the booking desk whether a specific individual is being held. But generalized information cannot be released.”

  Mitch strode to the booking computer. “Are you holding a woman in jail?”

  “Screening.”

  It was only a vague suspicion, but he said, “A woman named Marta.”

  “Full name, please.”

  “I don’t know it. Can’t you tell me?”

  “Screening.”

  “Listen! I loaned my bicycle to a woman named Marta. If you have the bicycle, I want it!”

  “License number, please.”

  “A 1987 license—number six zero five zero.”

  “Check with Lost and Found, please.”