Point Ultimate

by Jerry Sohl

  He came to the end of the lawn and stopped. Before him lay gravel that dipped into a ditch and then up to a blacktop road. He walked along the lawn edge, examining the ground in each direction, looking for the warning device he knew was there.

  He found it a few hundred feet away, a small scanner cube on the end of a metal shaft about five inches high that protruded from the earth like a warning finger.

  He examined it closely for a long time. The scanner was many sided, a lens in each face. Just beneath it was a grilled area. Probably a microphone and speaker.

  What to do about it? How to cross it?

  He thought a long time before he worked out a plan of action.

  He rose as if he had tired of looking at it, sauntered away as if he were going back to the house. In a few steps he was behind sheltering bushes.

  He took off his shirt.

  He rushed out from the bushes, threw his shirt over the scanner, then wound it round and round until there were several thicknesses covering the eyes.

  Then he ran along the gravel until he found a large, sharp stone that fitted comfortably in his hand.

  He ducked back behind the bushes to wait.

  “It is useless to try, Keyes.”

  Emmett whirled at the voice, expecting to see a scanner he had overlooked. Instead, he saw Dr. Smeltzer standing nearby.

  Gniessin had sent Smeltzer to spy on him!

  In a frenzy of action Emmett rushed the doctor, striking with the rock in a wide arc for his head.

  The doctor lurched aside. The rock grazed his head.

  “Stop!” Smeltzer cried, grasping the arm with the rock and holding it.

  Emmett pounded the doctor’s head, face, neck and shoulders with his free hand, jerking furiously to loosen his other hand.

  “Don’t!” The doctor cringed at the blows, still gripping the arm. “Don’t be-a fool!”

  A mighty wrench freed the hand. The doctor fell to his knees. He looked up. “Go ahead—you—damned fool!”

  Emmett stood with the rock ready to crash it down on the now unprotected head. But something in the doctor’s face held him.

  There was a whir of an approaching turbo. Both looked in the direction of the sound.

  “If you think Gniessin sent me, you are a fool,” the doctor said. “I was trying to stop you from doing something ridiculous.”

  Emmett moved away to see the turbocar beyond the bushes, still keeping Smeltzer carefully within range of action.

  “If you were planning to hit whoever comes to take your shirt off the scanner, you’re wasting your time, Keyes. Gniessin wouldn’t come himself, and the robot he’d send has reflexes many times faster than yours or mine. Besides, there’s something you don’t know.”

  For Emmett it was a moment of agonizing indecision. He could see the turbo coming to an abrupt stop on the road opposite them, and he wanted so desperately to get out of the villa he felt more prone to action than deliberation.

  “There is no escape,” the doctor said. “Don’t you suppose I would have fled long ago if there were?”

  A robot stepped out of the turbo and ran up to the scanner. It unwound the shirt, let it fall to the ground, then turned and went back to the car.

  Even then Emmett felt he could hit the robot with the rock. But still he did nothing. Finally, when the robot entered the car and sped away, he let the rock fall.

  He turned angrily to the doctor. “I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have knocked the robot out of operation and taken that turbo. You’re supposed to be on my side. At least you said you were. Why did you ruin everything just now?”

  Smeltzer rose, rubbing a shoulder. “You’re wrong about knocking that robot out. I doubt that you could have done that. But even if you had, you’d only end up back at the house. The robotic brain would have driven the car back by itself.”

  “I’d have jumped out. I would have been free.”

  “For a few moments. Gniessin would have sent a flier after you. The brain would have controlled that. There would have been no robot inside. It would have landed near you and moved closer and closer, cutting you off no matter which way you wanted to flee. Then Gniessin would have talked to you through one of the speakers in the flier, telling you to step inside or suffer the consequences. The flier is armed, you know. And you would have stepped inside, I think.”

  “What makes you think all that would have happened?” “Because it happened to me nine years ago.”

  Emmett looked away. It sounded true. It could have been.

  “Did you wrap your shirt around the scanner, too?”

  “No. I smashed the scanner with a rock.” He took Emmett’s arm. “Come with me.” They walked away, and after they had gone a short distance, the doctor said, “That scanner was too close. We can talk over here.” He led the way to a secluded area surrounded by several trees and bushes. There was a bench in the middle of it. “Sit down. You don’t have to be afraid of scanners here.”

  Emmett sighed, conscious of the lump of frustration in his stomach. The near attempt had taken a lot out of him. “I’ll have to think of some other way to escape. There must be a way.”

  “For years I tried to find a way. There isn’t any. I don’t try any more.”

  “Why not? Surely you must know everything there is to know about the villa by now. You ought to be able to find a way.” The doctor shook his head. “It’s human frailty versus the machine. Imperfect humanity against a perfect robotic brain. A brain that remembers everything. It has a thousand eyes, a thousand sensitive fingers. It operates just as efficiently whether Gniessin is here or not. If it were only just Gniessin, it would be easier. But you’re up against a machine.”

  'Where is this brain?”

  “Beneath the house. Buried in concrete. It’s powered by a giant reactor motor, the same one that powers everything else in the house.” The doctor grinned wryly. “Once I thought I might get to it to shut it off, but no one except Gniessin can get near it. I don’t know if even he could shut it off.”

  “Who put the brain there?”

  “Gniessin didn’t, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s standard equipment for district directors. There must be several hundred of them in the country.” Dr. Smeltzer sat beside him, drew up a

  knee and held it in locked fingers. “Even Gniessin doesn’t know all its potentialities. Sometimes I think he’s a little afraid of it.” He chuckled. “In a way, he has reason to be.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s smarter than he is. It does all his thinking and the thinking for all the robots. They get their power from it and they relay all their information to it. It’s bombproof and completely automatic, equipped with radar, high-cycle guns, and thousands of other gadgets and weapons of offense and defense.”

  “And I had to walk into all this,” Emmett said glumly. “Just like walking into a web and trying to wriggle free.”

  “You’ve been wriggling only one day. Think of me. I’ve wriggled in vain for years.”

  “But you don’t wriggle any more, is that it?”

  “That’s right.” The doctor leaned back against the hard stone of the bench and stared into the cloudless sky. “Maybe I’ve been a fool. Maybe not. But if I had to do it all over again, I can’t see how I’d do it differently.” He turned to Emmett and smiled. “But you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  Dr. Smeltzer rose and walked about the enclosure. “To understand it, you’ve got to know a little about me. I was born in a tempestuous time: nineteen forty-three. Right in the middle of a war. My father was a lieutenant colonel in the medical corps and I was out to emulate him. By nineteen sixty-nine, I, too, was in the medical corps, a new doctor, twenty-six years old, full of ideas and a will to work them out.”

  “And then the bombs fell,” Emmett said.

  Smeltzer nodded. “And then the bombs fell. No more army. So I went back to Peoria where my father once had a practice and set up an office. It was a miserable tim
e. Few drugs, hardly any instruments. I could have become a staff member of a commie-run hospital, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with those slaughter houses. In the commie book nothing is more expendable than life.”

  “Yes,” Emmett said. “I know.”

  They sat in silence, the sun warming their shoulders, a gentle breeze tugging at tree branches and bushes. A bird sang a few notes above them, then flittered away.

  “For thirteen years no one worked harder than I, caring for the people who streamed to my office. Some days I had no sleep at all. The pity of it is that I couldn’t do more, but with no affiliation with an occupation forces hospital—which is to say all hospitals—I had difficulty getting supplies. But during those thirteen years I never swerved in my decision not to treat all who came to see me. Of course I couldn’t treat half the women and I suppose you know the reason why.”

  Emmett shook his head.

  “Because they were the unlawfully pregnant. Each one wanted me to perform an abortion. But I still clung to the old professional ethics. ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d say. ‘I can’t do it. No doctor should.’ And then they’d wail about what would happen to them, these women who either weren’t married or had no birth permit. There was a preponderance of the latter. Everybody couldn’t afford birth control pills, you know.”

  “Why shouldn’t they wail about it?” Emmett said. “A lot of them in Spring Creek were sent to desert camps because of that.”

  “I realize that. The occupation forces are more strict about the birth rate than anything else. But a doctor can’t take a life, least of all that of an unborn child.”

  “The commies don’t care whose life it is, once you step out of line, Doctor. If you took one life, you’d be saving another, at least in this case.”

  “No, there was another way, though I hadn’t intended mentioning it.”

  “What was that?”

  The doctor turned and looked at him for a long time. “I sent them to a rest home I knew about. Let it go at that. There they could have their children without risk. But the Enemy caught up with it eventually.”

  “And then did you have to perform abortions?”

  “Not until after LaVonne came.” He stared up in the sky, his eyes glowing with warm reminiscence. “She was a beautiful girl.

  But she was also pregnant. I asked her if she was married. She said she was, and then she broke down and the story came out. Her husband had been sentenced to a slave-labor camp, had run away and she had lived with him in the woods for weeks before he died from not having his booster. The pregnancy dated from then.

  “It was a terrible thing for her to have to go through and there was something about her that touched me. She didn’t care much about living, but she thought if she had an abortion she might live out her life wrecking the occupation as much as she could. She made me suddenly furious with the occupation . . . and I found myself in love with her—something I thought would never happen, for I had lived thirty-nine years in love with one thing: Medicine. Now there were two.”

  “What did you do?”

  Smeltzer sighed. “I bought a permit to marry and a few days later I bought a birth permit. We named the boy Tom and he’s still in high school in Peoria, thank God.”

  “And your wife?” Emmett asked gently.

  “She’s living there, too. I saw her a year ago. She thinks I’m a doctor at a labor camp. I could never tell her about Gniessin and this villa, of course.”

  “But how did you ever end up here?”

  “I didn’t walk in, I can assure you of that.” The doctor strolled about the area in front of the bench, occasionally glancing at Emmett as he talked. “LaVonne and I often talked about the large number of unlawful pregnancies and the fact that there was no longer a—a rest home to send them to. Nature has a way of propagating the race despite all the things we try to do to stop her, including those five dollar pills and the high cost of birth permits. We estimated one out of every fifty girls go to camps because of the so-called illegal conception. So we decided to do something about it. And I changed my mind about abortions. I don’t know how many I performed before I was caught. And a little of me died, I think, each time I did it. But I saved a lot of lives, I guess.”

  “And you were finally arrested?”

  “I lasted only two months. How the commies ever found out about it, I’ll never know. But the case came to Gniessin’s attention as director. And the next thing I knew I was here, and it was either become Gniessin’s personal physician or the camp for myself and LaVonne and a commie upbringing for Tom.”

  “So you chose to come here.”

  “Yes.” Smeltzer rose and stretched. Then he turned, put a foot on the bench, saying, “We’re not supposed to be here, you know—you or I or Bradshaw. An Enemy doctor comes once a month to give Gniessin his booster and check him over, and when he does we all have to stay out of sight, for Gniessin’s supposed to get along only with robot help. He’s told me most directors have human help and the doctors wink at it. It would be a damned lonely life with only robots to talk to.”

  “But if there are Enemy doctors, why does he need you?”

  “He’s overweight, he’s got high blood pressure, and he doesn’t take care of himself. You see how he eats and drinks. Even has his own cook. And all that pastry! It’s disgraceful. So the day before the Enemy doctor comes, I fill him full of drugs, give him a colonic irrigation, a massage, steam bath and insist he go easy on the food and drink—at least until after the doctor has gone. He’s never failed a physical yet. God help us all if he ever does!” “You mean he’d be out then?”

  “They’d send him back home. And who knows what would happen to us—before or after!”

  “So Gniessin has his troubles, too.”

  “And he doesn’t seem to care. He’s happiest when he’s overindulging, and when he has those parties of his.”

  “Parties?”

  Smeltzer nodded. “Every Saturday night. That’s when Bradshaw shines. You’ll get used to them. Might even find them interesting at your age. I never go, but I’ve performed abortions as a result of the parties, if that will give you an idea of what they’re like.”

  CHAPTER - 11

  Saturday was going to be different. Emmett could see that right away.

  It began at breakfast with a notable absence of innuendo. Emmett, for once, was able to eat his meal in peace, while Smeltzer was silent, Gniessin studied, Bradshaw alert, and Jascha unusually watchful.

  “What’s the latest count, Jascha?” Gniessin asked suddenly.

  “One hundred and twenty-two, sir.”

  “That’s about ten more than last time, isn’t it?”

  “Eight more, sir.”

  Gniessin cocked an eye at Bradshaw. “You hear that, Bradshaw?”

  “It won’t make any difference, Mr. Gniessin. I ordered plenty. And I got the electrocookers all set up and on the job already with most of it.”

  Gniessin nodded absently, saying, “Let’s go over that menu again, Bradshaw. You sure there’s enough variety?”

  “The way I got it figured, we start ’em out at a table in the fountain room,” Bradshaw said. “We fill it with caviar rissolettes, almond parmesan fingers, ham and fig rolls, lobster canapes—and I’m having some butter variations for the canape bases.”

  “Any avocado?”

  I ain't plannin' any.

  “Better get some. They go well, I think. And that ought to round it out. But remember not to have too much. Jascha?”

  “Sir?”

  “How about the bartenders?”

  “Arrangements have been made for three from Springfield, sir.”

  “Good. When we had nothing but robot bartenders nobody seemed to care, but once we had a real bartender and he was swamped with orders. Why do people think robots can’t mix drinks as well as human beings? You always mix mine, Jascha, and I’ve never had reason to complain. What about the meal itself, Bradshaw?”

  “They’ll get sta
rted with vichyssoise, jellied tomato bouillon, four juices--”

  “That will give them plenty of choice.”

  “—and then roast turkey, Alaskan venison roast, fried chicken, lobster farci, frogs’ legs poulette--”

  “Don’t forget the rosemary on the venison.”

  “I ain’t ever goin’ to forget that again, Mr. Gniessin. No, sir. Not after forgetting it last time.”

  “Well,” Gniessin said, frowning thoughtfully, “that ought to do it, don’t you think? Plenty of salads, I suppose.”

  “Seven salads.”

  “Desserts?”

  “Four pies, five cakes and sauces--”

  “Any cherry mousse?”

  “We had that last time, Mr. Gniessin.”

  “Let’s have it again. I like it.”

  Emmett was waiting for him when he came out of the steam room, the massage table ready, the mineral oil on a table nearby, the towels handy. When the door opened and Gniessin walked through the rolling steam like some demon materializing from within a puff of smoke, Emmett said, “Dr. Smeltzer said he didn’t feel well, so he won’t be down.”

  Gniessin snorted as he drew a large towel around his enormous waist. “I see it’s Saturday again. Smeltzer’s always indisposed on Saturdays because he doesn’t approve of these parties of mine . . . only he’s never missed a massage session before. Check on that, will you, Jascha?”

  Jascha, who had been standing silently at the side of the door to the steam room, moved forward, saying, “He’s in his room, sir. At the moment he is lying on his bed. There is sweat on his forehead.”

  Emmett handed the fat man his drink. He wondered why Gniessin took the steam baths at all if he insisted on immediately replacing all the liquids he had lost.

  “Sweat, eh?” Gniessin handed the empty glass to Emmett. “Jascha, send Igor to the safe and get the doctor the usual dose, will you? I had forgotten and the doctor is too proud to ask. Of course he would have in an hour to two.” He turned to Emmett. “Do you think you can manage without him, Keyes?”