‘What makes you so positive he will move?’ Nolan said. ‘Because I believe I know him. Defeat is not something a vemplar can accept. Even if he was acting only from his own motives, Villion would not soon rest.’
‘And you believe he’s not? You think someone else behind him?’
‘I’m sure of it, Phillip.’
‘Who?’
Tedric shook his head. ‘I couldn’t tell you that, Phillip, even if I knew. And I don’t. The Scientists are convinced of it. That’s evidence enough for me.’
Nolan nodded his agreement. He had never quite known how to react to Tedric’s close association with the mysterious, godlike inhabitants of Prime. I can deal with the entire spectrum of human affairs, he thought, but when the heavens choose to intervene, I’m out of my depth.
’Then I guess there’s no use in my trying to argue you out of this,’ Nolan said.
‘Not unless you wish to order me to remain here.’
‘And if I do?’
‘I’ll go anyway.’
’Then let me just say this. You’re one of the few people in the Empire I feel I can genuinely trust. I don’t want to lose you, Tedric. The Biomen hate anything and everything human. If you go charging in there, demanding the life of one of their leading citizens, they’ll exterminate you like a bug.’
Tedric smiled. ‘I was contemplating a more subtle course.’
‘What?’
He shrugged. ‘It might be wisest to keep that to myself.’
Nolan looked hurt. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
’Of course I do, Phillip, but…why should I burden you with my thoughts?’ He made a sweeping gesture, waving at the crowded desk top. ‘You have enough on your hands as it is.’
Though not completely mollified by Tedric’s explanation, Nolan felt somewhat better. ‘All right,’ he said, ’then I don’t see how I can stop you. Maybe I’m just envious. I wish to hell I was going too. When do you want to leave?’
’As soon as possible. Tomorrow or the next day. Now that my mind’s made up, I see no reason for delay. I’ll need a ship- not a large one. A good tug will do. Nothing advanced. No Wykzl shields or the like. Defensive armament only. When I enter the Bioman Sphere, I don’t want to look like an invading force.’
Nolan looked worried but nodded. ‘I’ll have my secretary issue the orders before she goes home. You’re not going alone, I hope.’
‘No. Ky-shan will accompany me, of course. And Yod Cartwright. Since his Academy appointment hasn’t come through, he has too much free time on his hands. If I left him here on Earth, there’s no telling what kind of mischief he might get involved in. Also, if it’s possible, I’d like to have Captain Juvi Jerome assigned to my authority. She was on the Iron Sphere, too, and she’s a capable hand.’
‘I’ll try to locate her and…’
’That won’t be necessary. She’s here in New Melbourne. Yod has been keeping in touch with her on a regular basis. Trying to, anyway. She insists he’s too young and inexperienced for her. She may have a point, but at least Yod doesn’t give up easily.’
‘I see.’ Nolan grinned. ‘Well, is there anything else?’
‘Just one thing, Phillip. Wilson, the renegade robot. Do you have any idea where he is now? As far as I know, Wilson is the only person who has ever been to the Bioman Sphere and returned. If I could talk to him before I left, it might provide some advantage. Otherwise, I’m going in there blind.’
Nolan was smiling happily. ’Isn’t that funny you should mention it?’ He thrust a hand among his papers and drew out one sheet. ’This report came in yesterday morning. From the Vylo Sector. Wilson has been arrested. It seems he was indeed running that gang of pirates that’s been operating in the area since just after the rebellion. The corpsmen who captured him have filed a list of charges long enough to stretch from here to the Moon and back again. Wilson hasn’t changed, apparently. It took ten men to catch and hold him. They’ve got him in jail on a backworld he plundered. If the natives haven’t hanged him yet, I’ll see if I can have him sent here.’
‘No, don’t bother.’ Tedric had an anxious look on his face and began edging towards the door. ‘I think I’d better go to him.*
Nolan laughed. ‘Wait a minute. I was only joking. Do you really think I’d let anyone hang old Wilson? Naturally, Randow will have to pardon him. Wilson had as much to do with the success of the rebellion as anyone - including you and me.’,
‘It’s not that I’m worried about. It’s Wilson himself. How long do you think a backworld jail can hold him? Do me a favour, Phillip. Send a transmission at once. Tell your corpsmen to double the guard on Wilson. Watch him day and night. Tell them to put him in irons if necessary. I’ll be leaving at noon. Get me that ship. This might be my only chance.’
Nolan was laughing so hard that he failed to see Tedric leave. When he finally looked up and realised his friend had gone, he felt suddenly lonely.
With a sigh, he tapped the vidiphone on the desk. The lieutenant’s pretty face beamed back at him.
‘Sir?’ she said.
‘Come here a moment, please. I have a set of orders I want you to get out right away.’
Then, leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes and tried not to feel bored again right away.
CHAPTER 3
Renegade Robot
Robot KT294578 crouched on the dirty floor of the cell, wrists and ankles securely bound in iron bracelets, and glared fiercely at the two fuzzy cheeked Corps lieutenants who knelt at the opposite end of the room, quietly playing cards.
‘Hey,’ said KT294578, trying to growl. ’This is a damned outrage, I’m telling you. This is a violation of every precept set forth in the Declaration of the Rights and Privileges of All Things Human.’
The younger of the two lieutenants looked up from the cards in his hand and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, Wilson. We checked that out. Since you’re not human, the declaration does not apply.’
‘How do you know I’m not human?’ The robot sprang angrily to his feet and lunged forward, but the chains attached to the wail held him fast. He shook his wrists, rattling iron. ‘If I was free, I swear I’d break both of you in half. I may be a robot, but I’m as human as any man, and nobody has ever said differently and lived to boast of it.’ ‘We apologise,’ said the second lieutenant, playing a card. ‘If you say you’re human, then you’re human. Maybe that’s why the Commander ordered you chained up. Maybe he didn’t want the locals to stretch your human neck.’
‘Do you know what you are?’ the robot said. ‘You’re cowards - both of you. I thought corpsmen were supposed to be an elite - brave, courageous, bold. Come on. Let me loose. Give a man an even break. Show your mettle.’
Both lieutenants shook their heads. ‘Nothing doing, Wilson. Our instructions are to keep you chained up tight till Colonel Tedric arrives.’
’Oh, sure,’ said KT294578. He pretended to relax, sitting again. ‘You poor saps,’ he said feelingly.
The first lieutenant glanced up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means Colonel Tedric, that’s what. Don’t tell me you don’t know. A born sadist. The cruelest man in the Empire. Tedric’s going to kill me when he gets here and you two are going to have my blood on your hands. He won’t give me a chance. The man has a mean streak four parsecs long. Hey
- ouch!’ The robot gripped his right leg. ‘I’ve got a cramp in my thigh. It’s killing me. You’ve got to let me loose now.*
The lieutenant yawned, playing another card. ‘Don’t bother, Wilson. We’ve heard your stories a hundred times. Cramp or no cramp, you’re not getting loose till the Colonel gives the word. And if you don’t shut up, we might just help him put you out of your misery.’
KT294578 spat. Then, chuckling all at once, he shrugged his shoulders. After all, what was the point of getting angry?
That, of course, was the focus of the problem - his problem. And not just anger either, but every other human emotion from total
love to utter hate with a thousand and more stops between. Of ail the robots ever built, only one
- KT294578, or Wilson, as he now called himself- had ever possessed such things as emotions. If he was now a notorious criminal - and Wilson had never denied that was exactly what he was - he believed it came from the simple fact that he carried a human heart trapped in a machine body. Who could long remain sane under those circumstances?
One of the last robots to be built before the collapse of the industry, Wilson closely resembled a human being. Only his cold, smooth, passionless face, as unmarked as a baby’s, revealed his true identity. He was at least five hundred years old, but the first part of his life he could recall only as a ’ vague blur. He assumed he had spent most of those years as any other robot did, sold and traded through the various backworlds, passed from owner to owner, planet to planet, hand to hand. If at any time during that period he had suffered a major injury - the loss of an arm, for instance, or a leg - he would most likely have been sent to the furnaces and gone willingly, with nobody to grieve for a moment, most especially including himself.
For he hadn’t been human. Not then. And now he was. That made all the difference in the cosmos, and he remembered exactly how it had come to be.
Although this was something Wilson had never confided to another soul, it was seldom far from his mind. If a normal man had been able to recall the moment of his birth, the memory would have assumed the same critical role in his consciousness as Wilson’s memory played in his.
He had belonged to a married couple - colonists - Arti and Magi Javro. The two lived alone on a backworld in the Noradian Sector that had been studiously avoided by the large colonial groups that had left Earth during the time of the Scattering. The planet was not an especially fertile one. The winters were long and bleak.
But the Javros loved their planet very much - perhaps simply because it was theirs. And they loved each other, too. Wilson had not been aware of this at the time, but he later realised it was the only explanation that truly fitted.
He could see the two of them clearly in his mind’s eye. Arti, husky, red-bearded, light-complexioned, with a gravely bass voice. And Magi, his almost exact opposite -slim and blonde and detached and cool-voiced.
Wilson could not recall how he had come into the couple’s possession. He recalled arriving on the backworld in the middle of summer and labouring through a temperate autumn to carve a home out of the wilderness. He uprooted huge trees with his bare hands and raised and moved immense boulders. Arti designed and Wilson constructed a secure log cabin in a matter of two days.
Because of their isolated circumstances, the Javros treated Wilson more like a member of the family than a piece of chattel and he remembered and appreciated that, although at the time it had meant nothing to him.
Winter arrived without warning. One day the sun beamed like a yellow eye in the sky and the next a terrible storm roared and raged. Although some preparations had been made for the advent of winter, the suddenness and fury of this first storm caught them all by surprise.
With the storm came the beasts.
None of the survey teams had ever reported their existence. Wilson now believed that the beasts, for whatever biological reasons, hibernated during the warm months and emerged only with the cold. They were big, white-furred, red-eyed, sharp-toothed, two-legged flesh eaters. And there were hundreds of them.
With the first cold wind of winter, the beasts awoke and left their caves and went in pursuit of the scent of fresh meat.
Arti Javro said he was going out to collect additional firewood from the small shed just outside the cabin door. He told Wilson to follow him. Arti took less than two steps outside the cabin door and the beasts grabbed him and literally tore him apart.
Wilson sprang back into the cabin. He slammed the door and bolted the lock. Turning, he carefully told Magi Javro exactly what had transpired.
She nodded thoughtfully. Even then, he could almost sense the pain she obviously felt and yet she never wept a tear.
‘AH right,* she said finally, ‘how many of these beasts did you see?’
‘Hundreds,’ he said. ‘All just outside the door. They’re white-furred, so the snow hid them till they moved.’
‘Are you afraid they’ll break into the house?’
He was already using a portion of what remained of their wood to board up the two small windows. ‘Not now.’
‘How much food do we have?’
’Enough for two months, Earth reckoning.’
’For me alone?’
‘I’ve already taken that into account.’
’Then we’ll simply have to stay here and wait for the beasts to leave.’
But the beasts did not leave. At least twice a day Wilson peered through a narrow gap in the boarded-up window closest to the door and the beasts were always there, though at times he had to squint to see them clearly through the white haze of a storm. Undoubtedly, some did leave, but others must have come, for their original number never lessened. The winter was long and bleak. Storm followed storm, piling drifts high around the cabin. One month passed, then two.
At night, for warmth and because they had long since exhausted their supply of firewood, Magi slept with Wilson, her arms and legs encircling his body, her cheek pressed close to his chest, and while this was not the prime reason for what later happened to him, it was surely a part of it.
At the end of this period, although a small quantity of food remained unconsumed, Magi Javro was thin, drawn, weak, and easily exhausted.
‘Do you think when spring comes the beasts will go away?’ she asked.
He said, ‘Yes.’
‘And when will that be?’
’One month, maybe two.’
‘I’ll be dead. You won’t. You don’t have to eat but I do. If I stay here I’ll starve to death and if I go out I’ll be eaten alive.’
Wilson, a typical robot without emotions, simply nodded. What his mistress said was true.
‘So we have no hope. I don’t. There’s no point in prolonging the inevitable.’
It was right then, just as she finished her statement, that it began to happen. Part of it happened. Wilson felt a strange stirring in his breast. Before he knew what he was doing, he said, ‘You could eat me.’
He expected her to be disgusted, but she just shook her head, smiling faintly. ‘I could but I won’t.’
‘Why?’
‘It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Because of the taboo?’
‘No, not really. I honestly think I’m way beyond that.’
He argued. He told her it made sense. With his flesh, she could last another month - even more. She could live till spring.
She shook her head firmly. ‘I won’t do it.’
‘Why? It can’t be wrong. I’m not human. My life is meaningless.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I love you.’
He couldn’t comprehend that. Even though he was by now at least half human, the complexity of such an emotion left him bewildered. He excused himself and went into a comer and sat with his back facing her and pondered the meaning of what she had said.
Love, he thought. What is it? How can she, a woman, have such feelings for me, who is only a machine? No, no, it doesn’t make sense. I can’t…
He was in the middle of these thoughts when a loud noise roused his attention. It was the slamming of the door.
He looked up and saw that he was alone.
By the time he got outside, there was no sign of Magi. The beasts clustered in a circle, tearing at something unseen in the middle of them. Wilson went after them with his bare hands. He killed a dozen and wounded even more, but finally they drove him back to the cabin.
He waited there till winter ended. Spring arrived with the same abruptness as winter and the snow thawed in a great rush of heat. The beasts went away.
Wilson emerged in the pure sunlight. With his hands, he dug a hole
in the damp ground and placed some of Magi’s personal belongings - clothes, jewellery, a book - in the bottom. Then he covered the grave and lay on the ground and wept.
From that moment on, willingly or not, Wilson was completely human - inside, where it mattered.
He became an outlaw. Given the conflicting circumstances of his existence, he believed no alternative lay open to him.
In time, his activities brought him to the attention of the imperial authorities. He was chased and hunted but never caught. In the end he did what no man had ever done. He left the Empire of Man and went to the Bioman Sphere. Later, he also visited the alien Dynarx and lived among them.
Upon his return to the Empire, Wilson resumed his outlaw activities, finding in the corruption of the latter-day Empire a perfect setting for his own designs. Somehow, more by accident than intention, he became involved in the rebellion that sought to oust Matthew Carey from the imperial throne. When the rebel forces defeated the imperial fleet in a great battle just beyond the orbit of Pluto, Wilson joined his fellow rebels and went to Earth in triumph. In the wake of victory, Wilson could have had almost anything he desired; wealth, glory, and position were his for the asking.
But what he wanted was none of that. At the earliest opportunity, he left the imperial court, took a ship, and went to the Vylo Sector in a remote corner of the Empire, where he immediately resumed his life as an outlaw.
Unfortunately for Wilson, the success of the rebellion interfered with his chosen way of life. Under the leadership of Phillip Nolan, the Imperial Corps of the One Hundred presented a real obstacle to any outlaw band. In time, Wilson was caught and arrested.
And now he was in jail here on his backworld, waiting for he wasn’t sure what.
‘Wilson.’
At the sound of his name, he raised his eyes. Lost in thought, he had no idea of how much time might have passed. The two young lieutenants had vanished. In their place stood a lone man - tall, thickly-muscled, blond -wearing the silver uniform of a corpsman. Wilson recognised this man from the time they had fought side by side during the rebellion.
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