Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, page 33
The pyramid of robots was two hundred strong at its base. From there it rose, tier by tier, growing narrower and narrower until it reached Mr. King and Robot R-54KG. They only had three good arms between them. But all three hands gripped their corner of the Net.
The Net now hung slack between its gantries. Abner thought of the terrific force that it had to absorb and he bit his lip, watching the robots at the top of the pyramid. They would only need to hold it for a moment, he knew. But it had to be held.
“You’re coming in now,” he told Maria. “I can’t see your rockets on top. But the Projectile’s shadow is covering the whole site.”
It came down steadily, drifting like a balloon despite its mass. The Net hung into the Pit, waiting.
The Projectile hit the Net almost daintily. The stationary gantries bent inward; the pyramid of robots began to give.
The Net deepened into the huge pit below. The Projectile had slowed, he could see that it had slowed … Albert King and R-54KG bent, where they could bend, and hung on. The pyramid swayed below them. Abner saw three robots tumble toward the ground; then Mr. King’s foot jets blazed, and somehow he and R-54KG held on to the Net. The Net sank deep into the pit below.
The Projectile came to rest in the Net and paused for an instant before it began to rise again, lifted by its incredible load of inertrium.
“Now! To the chains!” called Abner, and with everyone else he swarmed toward the great restraining chains.
Teams of human and mechanical persons labored on top of the five remaining gantries. They turned their windlasses, paying out the gigantic lengths of chain, and strained to make them meet at the top of the Projectile’s hull. Teams of robots hauled their chains across the top of the Projectile; but even from the ground Abner could see that the monstrous vehicle was going to escape back into the sky before they could capture it.
* * *
R-54KG reached the wide, smooth top of the Projectile in the simplest possible way: he threw his arms around Mr. King’s chest, drew his legs up out of the jet flames, and didn’t let go.
Once Mr. King dropped him on top of the Projectile he ran to join the nearest band of robots, struggling with the weight of a restraining chain. All together they heaved and dragged, took up the slack, and heaved and dragged again. Far across the Projectile R-54KG could see another team who was trying just as desperately to drag another chain to meet theirs.
He felt the Projectile start to stir underfoot, like a great big animal that had just begun to wake up. “Hurry!” he bellowed. “It’s going to rise!”
* * *
Mr. King flew down to the ground to pick up two more laborers: this time it was one of Harry’s men—that big fellow, Davies—and one of the League clerks. With Davies in his good arm, and the clerk clutching his thighs, he fired his foot jets again to return to the top of the Projectile.
As he rose upward he looked down, deep into the pit, to see the Projectile start its new ascent. It had lost all contact with the Net now. The Net was beginning to sag away from the hull.
Something clicked uncomfortably in Mr. King’s side. “Could you shift a little to the left?” he asked Davies. Coolant was spraying out over the big man’s arm. It was starting to get hot, someplace inside Mr. King’s torso.
“Was that, uh, an alarm?” Davies asked. “In your, uh…”
But Albert didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on the rockets that he could just now see on top of the gigantic vessel. Something was happening up there.
* * *
Abner had given up. He simply wasn’t strong enough to help the robots on the ground, where they were paying out the huge restraining chain that rose slowly up the gantry. One of the Big Lugs had lifted him gently by the armpits and set him down where he was out of their way.
He had nothing to do now except to watch as the Net began to go slack and the bottom edge of the Projectile started to rise, with its helpless passengers, over the lip of the pit.
He watched the Projectile lift upward.
And then … it stopped.
Somehow, impossibly, it was bobbing in place in the embrace of the Net. “Quickly! Fasten the chains!”
The robot pyramid disassembled itself to climb the gantries. High overhead, they swarmed and joined the teams at the restraining chains, and they pulled, and they heaved, and they locked the chains together; and then, in a frenzied matter of minutes, it was done. The chains went taut against the Projectile’s lift, and they held it there. Abner heard a cheer start up on the hull of the Projectile, and the cheer spread all down the gantries and across the pit, until every human person, and every robot who had a voice, was yelling in triumph and relief.
But how? Abner wondered. How did they keep it down?
Then he remembered that there were three rockets, spread equidistantly on the crown of the Projectile’s hull: three big industrial rockets, each one now roaring at full thrust. Because Abner had insisted that they put all three of them there.
Abner ran the numbers in his head. Yep, that would be just enough thrust to cancel out the inertrium’s lift.
Well, he thought. I guess that’s why that little robot isn’t the project engineer.
He scratched his nose. Though he was right about the trajectory, wasn’t he? If the gantry hadn’t failed …
Oh, well. In any case it had turned out to be a good idea, and the main thing was that now they could release the passengers. Robots with cutting torches were already working on the hull.
SUNDAY, 8:42 AM
All the fight had gone out of the bald man in the hat. He was slumped at the gantry’s base now, just two of his robots beside him. All around them rose little wisps of smoke from the slots of a grating.
Evvie eyed him with disgust. If she’d had all those killer robots it would have been a different story. Why, even with just one …
The mad scientists seemed to have lost interest in Pitt. They were wandering around with their jaws hanging open, staring up at the Projectile in its chained Net. Some of them seemed to be getting ideas.
Just one of the scientists seemed to care about Pitt at all. This one, dressed in a nightshirt, was dancing in front of the engineer and waving some kind of device in his face. The scientist’s eyes looked huge behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Pitt didn’t even seem to know the man was there.
“Yes!” chanted the scientist. “You may as well give up, bald man! If you don’t surrender to me personally, I will unleash on you my fantastic miniaturization ray!”
Evan perked up at “surrender to me.” It reminded him of better times. “What’s a miseryation ray?” he demanded.
“Be informed, small child! I shall show you!”
The scientist turned a dial on his device and waved it in front of Pitt’s two robots. They shrank, quite suddenly, until they were so small that they fell through the grating. Evvie’s fingers closed on the empty space where they’d been.
So she kicked the scientist in the left shin with such force that he dropped to the ground, screaming. She snatched the miniaturization gun out of the air.
She pointed it right at Pitt’s face.
“That’s it, mister, you’re finished,” she said. “Where are the rest of your robots? I want them all.”
Pitt’s eyes strayed over to her. He didn’t seem to care.
“I mean it, mister! Hand over your robots right now or I’ll, I’ll, I’ll miseryrate you where you … where you … right where you sit, mister!”
“In the butt?” Evan marveled.
“I can’t shoot him in the butt, stupid. He’s sitting on his butt.” Her eyes were still on Pitt.
The engineer waved one hand. “Do what you must,” he whispered. “All of this.… My world. My perfect world. He’s ruined it. He’s undone … everything. He’s defeated me. And I don’t even know who he is.”
His pained eyes scanned the crowds, the people on the Projectile, and the pit below.
“He didn’t even bother to tell me.”
Evvie squinted at him. She looked around, just to see if any of the man’s robots had turned up after all, but no. They hadn’t.
So she turned on the miseryation ray and let him have it. It was with a very small, but very surprised, look that Howard Pitt followed his last two robots through the slots in the grate.
Evan leaned over and peered after him. “We shoulda caught him,” he advised.
21
THE CYPHER OF THE SECRET LABORATORY
MONDAY, 1:16 PM
“There’s just no sign of Pitt, though,” Harry said. “In all that confusion during the landing … it looks like he just got away.”
He and Albert stood on the steps outside League headquarters. All around them the citizens of Retropolis went about their business as though nothing strange had happened over the weekend, except that very few people were using the Transport Tubes today.
Albert, so far as you could tell, was pleased. He hadn’t had his repairs yet; he was waiting until the workrooms had finished with the very many robots who’d lined up for theirs. So his left arm was still bent awkwardly, and his dented torso still prevented him from bending at the waist. Only his coolant leak had been patched. Still, he seemed at ease.
Pitt’s switchboard operators had been moved almost to the front of the line, so that Iris and her sisters had already received their upgrades: legs, enhanced cognition, and speech units. Albert had sent them to meet Mrs. Broadvine at the old switchboard offices. Mrs. Broadvine had been named the new head of the entire Info-Slate operation in a backroom conference at which Harry, Abner, and Albert had made a pretty convincing case for her.
Pitt’s robots were now full members of the League of Robotic Persons. In Pitt’s absence his assets had been seized, and what was left of them after the reparations was being divided among his former slaves. They were going to be able to get whatever upgrades they wanted.
“In the end,” said Albert, “we don’t really need him. We’ll use his own holdings to repair the damage he’s caused.”
His forearm plates twitched. “But it would be more satisfying if we could bring him to trial.”
Harry agreed.
The human and robotic persons of the city went on, left to right and right to left, often bumping into one another or coming to a full stop when somebody darted out of a doorway. But they all seemed to be getting where they needed to be. It was unplanned, and it wasn’t subject to a plan; it was a constant improvisation that spread across the streets and the skyways and the monorails of the city. It wasn’t efficient. It was just the way life works.
Neither Harry nor Albert understood that this was exactly what their victory was. But they were pretty happy, all the same.
MONDAY, 1:43 PM
“If you’ll just follow me, ladies,” Mrs. Broadvine trilled, “we will take a moment to get acquainted.”
Her train of operator robots were stepping high on their new legs. Their eyes were now alight with curiosity, thanks to the League’s swift upgrades. The line of human operators smiled as soon as they saw them.
“Iris, your legs are fantastic!” Freda called.
Iris showed them off the best she knew how. “Why, thank you, Freda. And thank you for all your kindness to me. Girls…”
Iris swept one arm out to her fellow robots, and then to the line of human operators at their stations. “These are the operators who found us and freed us.”
The robot operators did their best to applaud with hands that had never known how to applaud. It could use some work, but they did manage to get their point across. Freda and the others blushed, each in their assorted shades.
She turned to Mrs. Broadvine. “And this is our new Ma—”
She stopped herself.
“This is Mrs. Broadvine, our new…”
“Supervisor, dear,” Mrs. Broadvine finished for her. She patted the robot’s shoulder. “It’s all still very new, isn’t it? Let me show you the lunch room, and then I’ll assign you each to your new shift.”
The human operators kept up with their Info-Slate clients’ requests, but through long practice they also managed to carry on a quiet conversation of their own.
“She’s still being awfully nice, isn’t she?” said Rhonda.
Heads bobbed along the switchboard’s length.
Freda looked after their supervisor. “Maybe it’ll last, and maybe it won’t. But those legs on Iris, can you believe it? I wish I had gams as long as those.
“We just have to do something about the poor girl’s shoes.”
Rhonda glanced at the other operators, her eyebrows high and triumphant.
“There is nothing wrong with those shoes. Which, anyway, are her feet.”
MONDAY, 1:56 PM
Edward J. Bellin ripped a sheet of paper out of the typewriter and let it float to the floor, too intent on the next page to worry about where the last one had gone. This was shaping up into his best story yet.
He’d just reached the point where the space pirates had boarded the Projectile, though of course none of his characters knew about that yet; Nityananda was still trapped in the trash compactor and hadn’t yet found the air vent. Edward chuckled quietly to himself. Nityananda was going to be very surprised to learn that he was the long-lost son of Howard Pitt’s mentor, Edmond D. Bellicost, and that the fate of all the captives—and, indeed, of the Universe itself—depended on him. Not to mention the Princess.
Edward sped through the header: Captives of the Inertrium Egg—Based on True Events! by Edward J. Bellin. The typewriter’s bell rang twice. He reached for his notebook. What had that been, his note about air vents? He riffled through the pages.
Screw heads on the other side; yes, but he wouldn’t need that until later.
Edward hadn’t felt this energized, this inspired, in years. He’d entirely forgotten how near he’d come to giving up; rejection slips held no terrors for him now. Pages spread like white petals in a disorderly ring around his desk, made golden by the dim glow of the light bulb over his head.
MONDAY, 2:05 PM
To his great disappointment Abner had not been reassigned to the monorail system. There was a lot to do for the Transport Tubes, a lot of rework, to eliminate the need for all that excess air pressure, and someone, somehow, had to restore the public’s faith in the Tubes.
Maybe, though, if he did all that, he could go back to the trains. His manager had hinted as much, anyway.
Abner’s office began to tremble. A faint smile appeared on his face. That would be the Red Line’s number 14 train on its way inbound to the station. Then he frowned a little. It was still vibrating more than it should. He penned a quick message and sent it off, through its pneumatic tube, to someone who was in a position to look into it. He sighed.
There was a lot of paperwork on his desk. Abner had consigned all the inertrium, which still was being peeled off the Projectile, to various warehouses around the city. He’d made sure that Herbert got a generous share. After all, without the clues that Herbert had given him there might not be any inertrium to parcel out. There would just be …
Abner shook his head. It had been madness, Pitt’s plan, pure madness. It seemed incredible that no one had seen what the man was up to. And what, anyway, had he hoped to gain?
MONDAY, 2:17 PM
Pitt huddled in a crack next to the drainage pipe. His two robots were having some kind of problem in their new, smaller form; every time one of them tried to take a step with its right leg, the other one would do the same thing. For the moment he’d ordered them to step in unison. He’d have to figure it out later.
But … later? How could there even be a later?
A flood of rats was running along the floor of the culvert. Pitt lifted his feet out of the way before he remembered that the rats were actually taller than he was himself.
He just wished that for those few hours of perfection he’d had a chance to wander through the empty city and admire it in its perfect order. Things had become so hectic after he’d attacked the District. For those hours everything he’d built had been performing exactly the way he’d meant it all to work. No pushing, no crowding, no indecision …
He found himself watching the rats.
Their many-colored backs flashed in the uncertain light. They flowed past one another like a tide of water; they never collided; they never changed their minds; when one veered left, the others naturally veered along with it.
It was beautiful.
Pitt began to take stock of his resources. Two malfunctioning robots, one hat, and … his hand fell to the tiny slide rule at his hip. He smiled a miniature smile.
He could salvage materials here and there, and with those materials he could build more robots—new ones, on this new, reduced scale. Armed with that force, he could build again.
He looked lovingly at the rats.
He could build for a new population, one that instinctively knew how to behave efficiently. He would build them bridges and trains; he would construct food silos, and breeding chambers, and … and libraries! He would educate them! He would take this solid, well-behaved foundation of rodents and build them a civilization that would utterly surpass the huge, lurching, useless humans up above!
Pitt stood and raised his arms in benediction. These would be his people!
The tide of rats thinned out; they had all run past him now. But he would find them again. His people.
Down the culvert, from wherever the rats had come from, he heard the sound of footsteps.
“Come to me!” he cried. “I will lead you to greatness!”
Two tiny beams of light appeared, far down the drain.
“GACK.”
MONDAY, 2:48 PM
She shook her hand a little. Dash was just looking at the payment she’d offered him. He had a funny look on his face.
“It’s what we agreed on,” she explained. “Remember? All us operators took up a collection?”
“You know, I kind of forgot,” he said. He still wasn’t taking it.
The rooftop was deserted except for them, and Rusty, and the circling ornithopters. The Actaeon was back where it belonged with sturdy moorings to prevent it from sailing into space. Overhead, rockets and hover sleds sailed silently through the sky while—even higher—the big airships drifted along in their unhurried way. Through it all laced the network of the monorail tracks and—alongside them—the empty passageways of the Tube Transport system.
