Collected Short Fiction, page 510
For here was a friend, a weapon, a way to freedom!
“Please . . . Mr. White wants to know—”
And he scrambled out of the big bed, a slight anxious figure in a loose, blue night robe. He stood for a moment beside the motionless machine on the floor. Its handsome narrow face was still the same, faintly astonished and eternally benign. But now the steel-colored eyes were tarnished with heat, and thin blue smoke seeped from its nostrils.
He flinched from it suddenly. “We must get away from it.” He snatched the child’s arm, surprised at how light and tiny she felt, and drew her quickly beyond the bed. “The rays from it,” he whispered. “Still dangerous!”
He peered frantically about for a way of escape, blinking his burning eyes and coughing to the bitter smoke—even that might be laden with deadly radioactives. But the sliding doors and the huge window were all secured with rhodomagnetic relays, safe from human fingers. He saw no way out.
Unless—
The thought shocked him, like the cold touch of an unseen hand. Breath-taken, he stared at the child with smarting eyes. The throb of his heart was a hastening drum. He tried to collect himself again, and he heard her worried voice:
“—says we must hurry. ’Cause the black things will know I stopped this one, and more of them will come. Mr. White says we must come back now, if you are ready.” That acrid smoke had caught his throat, so that he could scarcely breathe, and hot tears blurred his eyes. He blinked at the child and put a numb hand against the smooth shining wall, to steady himself. “How . . . how can we get out?”
“I’ll take you,” the child said. “Just come with me.”
She put up her grubby little hand for him to clasp. It felt cold, and it was very thin and tiny. He could feel her shivering. He stared down at her.
“I don’t understand.”
“We go by teleportation.” She was careful with the word. “Mr. Lucky can help, but still it won’t be easy.”
Claypool dropped her hand.
“Huh!” His dry laugh was almost hysterical, and the bitter smoke changed it to a coughing paroxysm. He mopped his burning eyes with the soft sleeve of his robe. “I can’t do teleportation.”
“Mr. White thinks we can carry you,” she piped solemnly, “if you will help. You must think where we’re going, and do all you can.”
Shuddering, he tried to believe.
“Then where are we going?”
“It’s a far, dark place, underground. It’s always cold there, and you can hear water running. I don’t like it—but the black things can’t get in. Mr. White will help you find the way. He says we must try it, now.”
Claypool took her hand again. He tried to picture some dark cave, where White and the rest of his motley followers would be hiding. His mind could see the efficient black machines swarming here to avenge that one on the floor. He longed, with a savage intensity, to escape this sealed room, and their smothering care.
Surely, he tried hard enough.
But he was a physicist. He couldn’t quite imagine the mechanics of instantaneous translation. Even the swift rhodomagnetic missiles of Project Thunderbolt didn’t quite reach infinite accelerations, and anything faster was physically impossible. He wasn’t much surprised when nothing happened.
“Please—try!” The child’s thin voice seemed strained and breathless now. “Harder!”
“I did.” Claypool let go her hand, and his voice was a gasp of bitter failure. “I did—but I don’t know how. I’m afraid it’s all no use.” Her cold, tiny fingers clutched his again.
“You must—please!” she whispered desperately. “Mr. White says we can carry you—if only you will let us. I could move a rock as big as you. But you won’t let us. You must let go. Try again—now!”
He tightened his grasp on her quivering hand. He looked at her black anxious eyes, and thought of White and Overstreet and old Graystone and little Lucky Ford, waiting in some wet, cold cavern. He thought he tried. But he knew that nothing would happen.
And nothing did.
The child’s tiny fingers grew frantically tight, and suddenly relaxed, limp and trembling in his own. Big tears of frustration washed grimy streaks down her pinched blue face.
“Oh, I did try, Mr. White,” she was whispering bitterly. “ ’Cause I know it’s so important. We both tried. But we just can’t.”
And Claypool caught a flicker of motion, outside the great window. Something dark and very swift had just run past him. The machines were closing in.
He turned shakenly back to the little girl, and a sudden tenderness choked him. For a yearning moment, he wished that he and Ruth had found time for children—instead of Project Thunderbolt. He reached awkwardly for the child, to comfort her.
“It’s all right, Dawn—”
But some cruel school had taught her a proud independence. She moved back from his clumsy arm. Her bare skinny knees shook with fear and cold, but the tattered ribbon in her hair was still a defiant flag.
“No, it isn’t all right.” Her voice was bitterly clear. “ ’Cause Mr. White says it is very bad, for all of us. He says the black things will take your memory, now. And he says they will know about us, ’cause I stopped that one. He says it will be very hard, now, for us to change the Prime Directive.”
She stood a little away from him, tiny and indomitable. Her blue lips moved, murmuring silently. Her frightened eyes looked at something far away. Her black proud head tilted as if to listen. Then she turned back to him, sad and grave, and put out a small dirty paw.
“Good-by, Dr. Claypool. Mr. White says it’s time for me to go ’cause the black things are coming now. I’m awful sorry we couldn’t—”
Claypool glimpsed another black machine, beyond her, darting past the window. An instant later, the wide panel turned opaque, shutting out the dawn. And the glow of the murals on the high walls was suddenly extinguished. Smothering darkness fell upon them, and he heard a terrified gasp from the child.
After one staggered instant, Claypool understood. The humanoids, with their rhodomagnetic senses, had no need of light. That efficient brain on Wing IV intended to bewilder him with darkness, while the swarming units crept in to seize him.
He wondered how forgetfulness would feel.
“I’m awful sorry.” The child’s thin treble seemed too loud in that crushing dark. “But Mr. White says I must go.”
Her tiny questing fingers caught his hand for a moment, and then let go. For an eternal second he stood all alone in the dark, and the silence was creeping madness. Then sheer desperation armed him.
“Dawn!” he gasped into the darkness. “Wait!”
To his infinite relief, her tiny voice came back:
“I’m sorry, but Mr. White says—”
“Wait!” he sobbed again. “I know I can’t go with you, but tell Mr. White I have another way.”
He filled his lungs again, careless of the strangling fumes from the burned-out machine on the floor. His narrow shoulders lifted defiantly in the dark. He didn’t understand that paraphysical stuff, but his mind could see the sleek and deadly missiles of Project Thunderbolt, gleaming on their racks beside the launcher in the vault.
He didn’t know the mathematics of paraphysical translation, but those long missiles were fast enough. Fleeter than light, they could cross space to far Wing IV in the time a man could breathe a prayer for freedom, and the rhodomagnetic detonator in one tapered case could ignite that planet like a nova.
Groping in the dark, the child caught the sleeve of his robe.
“Mr. White says maybe we can help you,” she whispered swiftly. “But he wants to know your plan. ’Cause there are too many machines—more than I can stop.”
The wonder of that struck him suddenly.
“How do you know?”
“Mr. Overstreet can see them,” she said. “He can see us here, even in the dark.” Claypool remembered the pale, myopic clairvoyant. “And I can talk to Mr. Graystone.” He was the gaunt, alcoholic stage magician, the telepath. “Now Mr. White says we must hurry.”
Hoarse, with strain, Claypool’s voice ran swiftly:
“Then tell him I have weapons—self-guided missiles already ranged and set for Wing IV—still hidden in that underground station where you came.”
A dark apprehension shocked him.
“Unless the humanoids have already found them,” he added uneasily. “Because I saw an excavating machine, working toward the old building.”
“Wait,” the child breathed. “Mr. Overstreet can look.”
For an endless second the room was silent again, and he shivered to a dread of soundless black machines creeping upon them through the blackness.
“Mr. Overstreet can see the building,” she whispered at last. “The digging machine has broken through the corner of it, but the roof hasn’t fallen in. He says the black things haven’t found the elevator.”
A savage elation swept him up. “Then we’ll do it!” His rasping whisper was loud in the dark. “We must wait until the machines open the doors, to get at us. Then you must stop them, Dawn—as many as you can. And I’ll make a run for the building. If I get there before it falls, I can stop the machines.” Silence seemed to thicken in the room again, until the dark was clotted. He knew that Dawn was listening. Her low calm voice, when at last she spoke, seemed so loud it frightened him.
“Mr. White says we may try your plan. He says he had hoped to change the Prime Directive, without wrecking all the black things. But we needed you to help do that, and we can’t try it now. So your weapons are the only way, and he says I’m to stay and help you all I can. And he says—”
The child gasped faintly in the dark. Claypool felt her small hand tighten, where it clutched his sleeve. Frightened and breathless, she went on faintly:
“He says there’s one great danger we must take—worse than all the black things. He’s afraid we’ll meet Mr. Ironsmith.”
Claypool Started, as if some unpleasant thing had breathed upon him in the dark. He had almost forgotten the sinister riddle of Ironsmith, but now all his resentful bewilderment at that cheery, friendly-seeming man fell back upon him, in a crash of dazing apprehension.
“Ironsmith?” he whispered huskily. “I’ve been wondering . . . why he likes the mechanicals so well . . . and why they leave him so free.” He shivered in the dark. “Who is Ironsmith?”
He listened desperately, in the soundless dark.
“Mr. White says he doesn’t know.” Trouble slowed her voice. “ ’Cept he’s against us. But he has others with him—others in far places.” Claypool remembered those chessmen, set up in an unfinished game, and he felt a cold tingle at the back of his neck. “An’ they all work to help the black things.”
“Anyhow, I don’t thing Ironsmith is here,” he said hopefully. “He stayed last night at Dragonrock.”
The tiny hand tensed, against his sleeve.
“He stayed to hunt for us.” Dawn crept closer to him, and he could feel her trembling. “He tried to catch us in that old tower—he and his far friends. ’Cause they want to help the black machines.”
Claypool nodded bitterly. Now he began to see the outlines of the monstrous plot. The humanoids, he thought, must have purchased the loyalties of a few human renegades.
Ironsmith must have joined them—perhaps before he came to spy on Starmont. Probably Major Steel had bought him, with the promise of all the privileges and immunities he still enjoyed. Claypool’s fingers twisted savagely, hungry for the smiling traitor’s throat.
With a puzzled regret, the child was saying calmly:
“I was awful ’sprised, about Mr. Ironsmith. ’Cause he seemed so nice and kind, when he came to Dragonrock. He talked to me and gave me gum to chew. I liked him then, but I guess I was awful wrong—”
She broke off suddenly, to listen in the dark.
“Mr. White says we mustn’t wait any longer.” Her voice was breathless. “ ’Cause Mr. Overstreet can see them on the roof, fixing the ventilator to blow something in—something to make us sleep.” Urgently, she pulled at his sleeve. “But we can’t get out!” Claypool swayed to that shock of disaster. “They’ve got us trapped, till they want to open the door—”
“Come on.” She tugged sharply. “Mr. Lucky can open it.”
“But how can he, when he isn’t even here—?”
Claypool swallowed hard. Shivering, he peered around him in the dark, looking for that gnarled and withered little professional gambler, whom he had seen squatting by the fire and absently practicing telekinesis with a pair of dice.
Because the door was opening.
As smoothly as if a rhodomagnetic impulse from some humanoid unit had tripped the hidden relay, the wide panel slid silently back. Shadowless light flooded the room, from the hall. But Claypool couldn’t find Lucky Ford.
Gravely, the child explained:
“Mr. Lucky isn’t here. But he can reach the lock, and Mr. Overstreet helped him see what to do. Mr. White says tell you that extra-physical effects are not functions of physical time or physical space. He say the telekinetic effect—”
She was struggling bravely with the long words, but Claypool didn’t wait to listen. A slight barefoot Ugure, brown and awkward in the loose blue gown, he darted frantically out into the great hall of Starmont, where niches in the lofty walls were windows on many worlds. And a voiceless alarm sent him staggering backward.
At the end of the hall, two small black machines darted into view. They came running silently, with a terrible blind agility. One of them held a tiny bright object—a hypodermic needle, Claypool thought, probably loaded with euphoride. The other reached into a flapping bag strapped to itself, and started to throw something.
Instinctively, Claypool had pulled the child behind him. She looked past him with her dark sad eyes and dread chilled him—for the running humanoids stiffened suddenly. The one with the bright object turned a grotesque cartwheel. The other skidded on its face, and a little gray cloud exploded from the thing it had tried to throw.
“We must hurry.” Dawn tugged at Claypool’s sleeve. “ ’Cause Mr. White says that mist would make us sleep.”
The warm feel of the floor reminded Claypool that his feet were bare: He wanted his shoes, and he glanced desperately back into that huge room. He couldn’t see any clothing—the efficient machines must have stowed his shoes away somewhere—and he had no time to search. He caught the child’s hand again.
They ran down that vast hall, past strange still glimpses of other worlds—and all of them, Claypool thought bleakly, the humanoids must have conquered. The outside door clicked them again. They waited for Lucky Ford to open it, and came out into the brightening dawn.
Before them, beyond a covered Walk, lay the sunken garden. Tall, red-scaled stalks swayed with a slow, unpleasant motion. A few of the pink, enormous buds had opened, and the unfolded blooms were clumsily taking wing.
For those things in the garden, spawn of a different evolution, were neither plant nor quite animate. The monstrous blooms flew free, like great awkward iridescent moths. On slow fragile wings of violet and dusty gold and black, they drifted and fought and thinly screamed and mated in the air.
Claypool felt the child shudder back from the strangeness of them. A breath of heated air brought him their odor—a rank and fetid stench that belonged to some jungle planet, and yet somehow reminded him of the musky perfume Ruth used, Sweet Delirium. There must have been pollen, too, or some irritating dust from those slow, clumsy wings, for he was halted on the walk by a sudden fit of sneezing.
“I don’t like those awful flowers,” Dawn piped firmly. “Why do you think the black things plant them?”
Breathless with sneezing, Claypool didn’t try to answer. But he didn’t like them either. Something shook him, with an icy chill. And he thought of Ruth, sitting like an overgrown infant on the toy room floor, drenched with perfume and absorbed with her tower of soft plastic blocks. People were different, when they had taken euphoride.
His breath came back, and they ran on.
Searching that garden of halfplants, and the walks and lawns beyond, he could see nothing moving—nothing except those monstrous blooms, fruit of an alien tree of life, that hovered above in bright twos, kissing in a mist of golden pollen, or squeaking in strange fury as they slashed fragile clumsy wings with slow clumsy talons, and fell broken on the grass.
Beyond the garden, he saw the old search building—not yet demolished. He pointed, and tightened his hand on the child’s. They ran toward it desperately.
The digging machine was somewhere out of his view, but the low gray building was perched, now, on the very lip of the new excavation. The west wall had already been ripped away, and dark cracks fissured the flat concrete dome. Half the roof was sloping drunkenly—but still it hadn’t fallen.
He sneezed again as they ran, and wiped his eyes with the loose blue sleeve, and watched the grounds ahead. All the straight new walks and the flat new lawns seemed oddly abandoned. He saw a power mower, stopped and deserted. All the mechanicals, he thought, must be hiding from the child.
“Stop!” she sobbed abruptly. “That ship on the red floor—Mr. Overstreet says the black things are going to take it up and drop it on us!”
He let go her hand, and they turned back together. Claypool could see the cruiser on the landing stage, mirroring the blue dawn like a huge silver egg. He saw two black machines dart suddenly out of the blue-and-amber villa, racing for it.
Dawn Hall looked at them, and they fell.
She clutched Claypool’s hand, and they ran again. They came to the end of the smooth new walk, and jumped an open ditch. Not for many years had Claypool moved so violently. His thin muscles jerked convulsively. Something hurt in his chest. He labored for his breath. Sharp stones cut his naked feet.
“But we’ll make it,” he panted. “We’ve got to make it!”
Then Dawn’s fingers tightened in his hand, and she made a breathless whimper. Somewhere ahead, he heard a clash and whine of misused gears. And the child hung back, pale with terror, staring up at a long new ridge of raw earth and broken rock.
