Complete Short Fiction, page 348
The view was immeasurably desolate. As far as he could see was an arid waste, and every horizon was hidden in a mist of wind-blown sand.
Jenner gazed with a sense of despair. If there were a Martian sea out there somewhere, it was beyond his reach.
Abruptly he clenched his hands in anger against his fate, which seemed inevitable now. At the very worst, he had hoped he would find himself in a mountainous region. Seas and mountains were generally the two main sources of water. He should have known, of course, that there were very few mountains on Mars. It would have been a wild coincidence if he had actually run into a mountain range.
His fury faded because he lacked the strength to sustain any emotion. Numbly he went down the ramp.
His vague plan to help the village ended as swiftly and finally as that.
The days drifted by, but as to how many he had no idea. Each time he went to eat, a smaller amount of water was doled out to him. Jenner kept telling himself that each meal would have to be his last. It was unreasonable for him to expect the village to destroy itself when his fate was certain now.
What was worse, it became increasingly clear that the food was not good for him. He had misled the village as to his needs by giving it stale, perhaps even tainted, samples, and prolonged the agony for himself. At times after he had eaten, Jenner felt dizzy for hours. All too frequently his head ached and his body shivered with fever.
The village was doing what it could. The rest was up to him, and he couldn’t even adjust to an approximation of Earth food.
For two days he was too sick to drag himself to one of the troughs. Hour after hour he lay on the floor. Some time during the second night the pain in his body grew so terrible that he finally made up his mind.
“If I can get to a dais,” he told himself, “the heat alone will kill me; and in absorbing my body, the village will get back some of its lost water.”
He spent at least an hour crawling laboriously up the ramp of the nearest dais, and when he finally made it, he lay as one already dead. His last waking thought was: “Beloved friends, I’m coming.”
The hallucination was so complete that momentarily he seemed to be back in the control room of the rocketship, and all around him were his former companions.
With a sigh of relief Jenner sank into a dreamless sleep.
He woke to the sound of a violin. It was a sad-sweet music that told of the rise and fall of a race long dead.
Jenner listened for a while and then, with abrupt excitement, realized the truth. This was a substitute for the whistling—the village had adjusted its music to him!
Other sensory phenomena stole in upon him. The dais felt comfortably warm, not hot at all. He had a feeling of wonderful physical well-being.
Eagerly he scrambled down the ramp to the nearest food stall. As he crawled forward, his nose close to the floor, the trough filled with a steamy mixture. The odor was so rich and pleasant that he plunged his face into it and slopped it up greedily. It had the flavor of thick, meaty soup and was warm and soothing to his lips and mouth. When he had eaten it all, for the first time he did not need a drink of water.
“I’ve won!” thought Jenner. “The village has found a way!”
After a while he remembered something and crawled to the bathroom. Cautiously, watching the ceiling, he eased himself backward into the shower stall. The yellowish spray came down, cool and delightful.
Ecstatically Jenner wriggled his four-foot-tail and lifted his long snout to let the thin streams of liquid wash away the food impurities that clung to his sharp teeth.
Then he waddled out to bask in the sun and listen to the timeless music.
THE END
AUTOMATON
The Tobors were automatons, obeying only the order to fight. They could be made human once more if you appealed to a basic human emotion.
THE human automaton stirred uneasily in his small, almost invisible plane. His eyes strained into the visiplate, scanning the sky ahead. Out of the blue came two flashes of fire. Instantly, the plane careened as if struck from a double blow.
It fell slowly at first, then more rapidly, down into the enemy lines. As the Earth came near, a resisting mechanism went into operation. The rate of fall grew slower. The automaton had time to see that there was a vast ruin of a city below. Soundlessly, the tiny machine settled into the shelter of the crumbled base of what had once been a building.
A moment passed, then the radio beside him sibilated. Voices which were strange to him were talking to each other.
“Bill!” said the first voice. “Shoot!”
“Did we get him?”
“Don’t think so. Not permanently, anyway. I think he went down under at least partial control, though it’s hard to tell with that safety device they have. My guess is he’s down there somewhere with his motor shut off.
“I think we disabled him.”
“Well, then, you know the routine when one of ’em is cornered just inside our lines. Do your psychology stuff. I’ll call the Vulture.”
“Don’t pass the buck to me. I’m sick of spouting those lines. You give ’em!”
“All right. Shoot me the come-on!”
“Hmmmra . . . he’s down there.
Think we ought to go after him?”
“Naw! The automatons they send out this far are basically the clever ones. That means we couldn’t capture him. He’d be just fast enough on the uptake to make it necessary for us to kill him, and who the devil wants to kill those poor, tortured slaves?—Did you get his picture?”
“Yep, he was listening with an intent look on his face. Fine looking chap . . . It’s funny, and kind of terrible how all this started, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Wonder what this guy’s number is.”
There was a distinct pause. The automaton stirred uneasily. His number? Ninety-two, of course.
What else? The voice was speaking again:
“Poor fellow probably doesn’t remember that he once had a name.” The other voice said, “Who’d have thought when they first made a human duplicate—flesh and blood and bones and all—that today, only fifty years later, we’d be fighting for our lives against people who look exactly like us, except that they’re natural eunuchs.”
The automaton listened with vague attention, as the two men went on talking. Every little while he nodded as their words reminded him of something he had almost forgotten. The human duplicates had first been called robots. They had resented that name, and changed it around to make it Tobor, and that stuck. The Tobors proved to be very effective scientists, and at first no one noticed how rapidly they took over scientific posts in every part of the world. Nor was it immediately noticed that the Tobors were secretly carrying on a duplication campaign on a tremendous scale. The great shock to the human masses came when Tobor-infiltrated governments on each continent simultaneously enacted laws declaring duplication would henceforth be the only means of procreation. Sex was forbidden under penalty of a fine for the first offense, then imprisonment, and then, for recalcitrants, the Tobor invented process of being made into an automaton.
A special police organization—which turned out to be already in existence—was set up to administer the new law. Tobor enforcement officers swung into action immediately, and there was some street fighting on that first day. Neither side even thought of compromise, so within two weeks full-scale war was raging.
The account ended, as Bill said: “I guess he’s heard enough. Come on, let’s go.”
There was muffled laughter, then silence.
The automaton waited, disturbed. Sketchy memories were in his mind of a past when there had been no war, and, somewhere, there was a girl, and another world.
The unreal pictures faded. And again there was only this ship that clothed his body in almost formfitting metal. There was the need to go on, aerial pictures to be taken . . . Must get up into the air!
He felt the ship tug in response to his urgent thought, but no movement followed. For seconds, he lay lethargically, then came a second urge for flight. Once more the tiny ship writhed with effort, but no upward movement resulted.
This time the automaton had the slow thought: “Something must have fallen across the ship, and is holding it down . . . Have to go out and remove it . . .”
He squirmed against the metal and padding that encased him. Sweat poured down his cheeks, but presently he stood free in ankle deep dust. As he had been trained to do on such occasions, he checked his equipment . . . weapons, tools, gas mask—
He flung himself flat on the ground as a great, dark ship swooped down out of the sky, and settled to the ground several hundred yards away. From his prone position, the automaton watched it, but there was no sign of movement now. Puzzled, the automaton climbed to his feet. He recalled that one of the men on the radio had said a Vulture had been called.
So they had been playing a trick on him, pretending to go away. Clearly visible on the ship’s hull was the name: Vulture 121.
Its appearance seemed to suggest that an attack was to be made. His strong, determined mouth tightened. They’d soon learn it didn’t pay to meddle with a Tobor slave.
Die for Tobor, mighty Tobor . . .
Tensely, the young woman watched as her pilot lowered the highspeed plane toward the leveled ruin of the city where the Vulture lay. The big ship was unmistakable. It towered above the highest remnant of shattered wall. It was a black bulk against the gray-dark sameness of the rubble.
There was a bump and she was out of the machine, clutching her bag. Twice, her right ankle twisted cruelly as she raced over the uneven ground. Breathlessly, she ran up the narrow gangplank.
A steel door clicked open. As she hurried inside, she glanced behind her. The door clanged shut; and she realized gratefully that she was safe.
She stopped, as her eyes had to accustom themselves to the dim metal room. After a moment she saw a little group of men. One of them, a small individual with glasses and a thin face, stepped forward. He took the suitcase from her with one hand, and with the other, he grabbed her hand, and shook it warmly.
“Good girl!” he said. “That was well and swiftly run, Miss Harding. I’m sure no spying ship of the robots could have identified you in any way during the half-minute you were exposed. Oh, pardon me.”
He smiled. “I shouldn’t be calling them robots, should I? They’ve reversed all that, haven’t they? Tobors is their name. It does have more rhythm and should be psychologically more satisfying to them. There now, you’ve caught you’re breath.” By the way, I’m Doctor Claremeyer.”
“Doctor!” Juanita Harding managed to say, “are you sure it’s he?”
“Definitely, your fiancé, John Gregson, chemist extraordinary.”
It was a younger man who spoke. He stepped forward and took the suitcase from the older man’s fingers. “The patrol got the picture by the new process, whereby we tune in on their communicating plates. It was flashed to headquarters, and then transmitted to us.”
He paused, and smiled engagingly. “My name is Madden. That’s Phillips with the long, gloomy face. The big fellow with the uncombed hair, lurking there in the background like an elephant, is Rice, our field man. And you’ve already met Doctor Claremeyer.”
Rice said gruffly, “We’ve got a hell of a job here, ma’am, begging your pardon for them rough words.”
Miss Harding took off her hat with a brisk sweep of one hand. The shadows retreated from her face into her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “Mr. Rice, I live with a father whose nickname is ‘Cyclone’ Harding. To him, our everyday language is an enemy which he attacks with all available weapons. Does that answer your apology?”
The big man chuckled. “You win. But let’s get down to business. Madden, you’ve got a brain that thinks in words, tell Miss Harding the situation!”
“Right!” The young man took up the refrain grimly. “We had the good fortune to be in the air near here when the first report came through that an automaton had been brought down alive. As soon as the identification arrived, we asked army headquarters to set up a defense vine of all available planes. They stripped the entire nearby line to help us.”
He paused, frowning. “It has had to be very carefully done, because we don’t want to give the Tobors any idea of what’s going on. Your fiancé can’t get away; that is certain, I think. And he can’t be rescued unless they come out in force of a size that catches us momentarily off guard. Our big problem is to capture him alive.”
“And that, of course—” It was Claremeyer, who cut in with a shrug of his shoulders—“may be easy or it may be difficult. Unfortunately, it must be fast. The Tobors will not be unaware long of this concentration of forces, then they will examine his file, analyze at least a part of the true situation, and act.
“The second unfortunate aspect is that in the past we have allowed ourselves a percentage of failures. You must realize that our tactics are almost entirely psychological, based upon fundamental human impulses.”
Patiently, he explained the method.
“Ninety-two! . . . This is Sorn speaking.”
The voice came sharp, insistent, commanding, from the automaton’s wrist radio. The automaton stirred in his concrete shelter. “Yes, Master?”
Apparently, the contact was all that was desired, for he heard the other say, “He’s still alive!” The voice was farther away this time, as if the humanoid had turned to speak to someone else.
A second voice spoke hesitantly, “Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered, but this is the one that destroyed his file. Now, a Vulture crew is trying to save him.”
“They do it every time.”
“I know, I know.” The second speaker sounded impatient with himself, as if he was aware that he might be acting foolishly. “Still, they’ve already given a lot of time to him, more than normal, it seems to me. And there is the fact that this particular ship engaged in a lengthy series of code messages with its headquarters. Afterwards, a woman arrived on the scene.”
“They nearly always use women in. these rescue operations.” The Tobor’s voice held a note of distaste, but his words were a dismissal of the other’s argument.
This time there was silence for many seconds. Finally, the doubting one spoke again, “In my department, I have been acutely conscious that somewhere in our operations about two years ago we unexpectedly captured a human chemist who, it was stated, had discovered a process for sexualizing Tobors.”
His emotional disgust was almost too much for him, and in spite of the frankness of his next words, his voice trembled. “Unfortunately, we learned of this too late for us to identify the individual involved. Apparently, he was put through a routine interview, and dementalized.”
He had full control of himself again and went on sardonically. “Of course the whole thing could be just a propaganda story, designed to unnerve us. And yet, at the time, our Intelligence reported that an atmosphere of gloom and depression pervaded human headquarters. It appears that we raided a city, captured him in his home, wrecked his laboratory and burned his papers.”
His tone implied that he was shrugging. “It was one of scores of similar raids, quite impossible to identify. Prisoners captured in such forays were in no way differentiated from those captured in other ways.”
Once more, silence . . . then . . . “Shall I order him to kill himself?”
“Find out if he has a weapon?”
There was a pause. The voice came close, “Have you a blaster, Ninety-two?”
The human automaton, who had listened to the conversation with a faraway blankness in his eyes and mind, alerted as the question was directed at him through his wrist radio.
“I have hand weapons,” he said dully.
Once more the interrogator turned away from the distant microphone. “Well?” he said.
“Direct action is too dangerous,” said the second Tobor. “You know how they resist actual suicide. Sometimes it brings them right out of their automaton state. The will to live is too basic.”
“Then we’re right back where we started.”
“No! Tell him specifically to defend himself to the death. That’s on a different level. That’s an appeal to his loyalty, to his indoctrinated hatred of our human enemies and to his patriotism to the Tobor cause.”
Lying in the rubble, the automaton nodded as the Master’s firm voice issued the commands. Naturally . . . to the death . . . of course.
On the radio, Sorn still sounded dissatisfied. “I think we should force the issue. I think we should concentrate projectors in the area, and see what happens.”
“They’ve always accepted such challenges in the past.”
“Up to a point only. I believe most earnestly that we should test their reaction. I feel that this man resisted too hard during his captivity and there’s a tremendous pressure working on him.”
“Human beings are very deceptive,” said the other doubtfully. “Some of them are merely anxious to go home. It seems to be a powerful motivation.”
His objection must have been rhetorical. After a bare moment of silence, he looked up and said decisively, “Very well, we’ll attack!”
By an hour after dark, a hundred projectors were engaged on both sides. The night flashed with long trailers of bright flame.
“Phew!” Rice raced up the gangplank into the ship. His heavy face was scarlet with effort. As the door clanged shut behind him, he gasped, “Miss Harding, that fiancé of yours is a dangerous man. He’s trigger happy, and needs more propaganda.”
The girl was pale. She had watched Rice’s attempt to get the screen into position from the great barrier window in the observation room. She said, “Maybe I should go out now!”
