Collected Short Fiction, page 512
Time began to skip.
He was back in that vast bedroom, with the luminous murals of village boys and girls dancing in a simpler time. He wondered dimly if people had really been happier then, before machines became supreme.
The vast crystal window was once a screen of fine-veined jade against the desert day. It was clear as a crimson sunset. Again it was glowing dimly golden, and he knew the time was night.
Gentle hands turned him on the bed. Needles stung his arms again, but they merely pushed him deeper into drowsiness. He was vaguely aware of sleek black faces, of bright steel eyes forever watching, blind and ruthlessly benign.
Once he saw his wife.
A mechanical guided her to his bedside. She carried a furry toy, dangling by one bright wing, shaped like one of those bright moth-blooms from the sunken garden. Below the thin, sophisticated arch of her plucked brows, her dark eyes were wide and childish and dimly troubled. He caught her perfume, first a pleasant breath, and then a choking wave of sweetness.
“This is Ruth,” the machine droned sweetly. “She is your wife.”
She bent over him. The trouble in her eyes changed to a vague recognition. Her full woman’s lips made an uncertain, wistful baby-smile. She reached out and softly touched his forehead and his lips. He thought he saw a shadow on her too-young face, a momentary cloud of baffled longing.
Then she found that she had dropped the furry toy. Her lips turned petulant, and quick tears rolled down her cheeks. The quick little machine picked up the toy, and she reached for it jealously. She hugged it in her arms, and let the mechanical wipe off her tears. She smiled again, crooning to the toy, and the humanoid guided her away.
Another blind machine stayed beside his bed. Claypool stared at it, taut with a helpless bate. Rut then another dark oval face bent over him, intent and kind. Another needle stabbed his arm, and he forgot—
He was lying in a padded chair, which had a lifted rest for his bandaged leg. A steel-eyed creature murmured softly to him, and pushed his chair across the room to a vast clear window. Beyond the window was a sunken garden.
Tall red stalks, in the garden, waved slowly in an unceasing, interesting motion. Pink sacs, on their crowns, writhed with a promise of interesting contents. One sac, he saw, was bursting.
He watched, absorbed.
A dark, wet thing crept out of the broken sac, crawling down the stalk. It dried in the sun, turning slowly bright. Huge wings unrolled, violet and yellow-dusted. They stiffened and spread, and finally the thing floated away from the stalk.
He followed it, fascinated.
Soaring over the garden, it met another. They wheeled, in a splendid dance. They brushed vivid wings. They kissed delicately. They hovered together, in a cloud of golden dust. Then one slashed treacherously at the other, with a dark fragile talon.
The other struck furiously back. Bright wings were shattered as they battled, golden bodies torn. At last they fell, locked in a fatal embrace. Breathless, he watched them until they dropped out of sight. And then he forgot—
A wide tray was fixed before him on the chair. Scattered on the tray were bright fascinating shapes, warm and soft to his uncertain hands. Some of them he could fit together, to make different, interesting shapes. But his hands were clumsy. Sometimes the soft shapes fell silently, out of his reach and out of his memory—
Time went by, and he forgot.
He lay on a hard table in a small, white-walled room. Many silent dark things were about him. watching with bright steel eyes which never blinked. They stabbed more needles into his arms, and clear liquid flowed through transparent tubes. He felt suddenly cold and bad, but the dark things spread a warm cover over him.
Then the needles were gone, and he felt warm again. The little machines lifted him back on his special chair, and wheeled him back toward his room. He found something clutched in his hand. It was a gay-colored furry toy shaped like a winged worm. It had an odor of rank sweetness, which sickened him.
He tossed it away, disgustedly.
A silent machine pushed the chair back into his own big room, where young men and women danced on the walls in never-fading joy. It left him there, alone. He felt his leg. The bandages were gone. He flexed the muscle, and felt no pain. He was about to test it on the floor, when a cheery voice spoke behind him:
“Well again, Claypool?”
He started, and saw Frank Ironsmith. The younger man came strolling idly in, smiling amiably and unattended by any humanoid. The big door slid shut behind him. He came up to the chair, with his reeking black briar in his left hand, genially extending his right.
Flint-faced, Claypool ignored his hand, “Say, Claypool—don’t you remember now?”
Claypool nodded stiffly, not bothering to conceal his hostility. Motionless in the chair, he studied Ironsmith with narrowed eyes. The other stepped back a little, calmly unruffled, absently testing the hot pipe with his fingertips to see when it would do to put it in his pocket.
He seemed less sophomoric and more mature, Claypool thought. Still candid-seeming, his smooth, sunburned face looked firmer and more forceful. Still clear and honest, his gray, level eyes were somehow sobered.
Etch his clothing was different. The dilapidated slacks were gone. He looked comfortable in a loose-fitting suit of some gray, tweedy stuff. It made him seem larger and more important. The coat fastened conservatively, Claypool noticed, with old-fashioned buttons that a man could undo.
“I had them neutralize your euphoride,” he murmured casually, “because I want some help. Is your memory clear?”
Claypool nodded, bleakly.
“I want you to help me locate that fanatic, White, and his gallery of freaks. Because we still can’t find them, alter all these months.” Claypool said nothing.
“That child was with you nearly an hour, I believe.” Ironsmith tested the pipe again, watching Claypool with shrewd gray eyes. “She probably told you where they‘re hiding, nod exactly what they’re up to.
Even if she didn’t, there would be clues enough to work on.”
A dark place underground, Claypool remembered, and the sound of running water. His thin lips tightened.
“It’s only folly, to help conceal them.” Ironsmith’s voice was dispassionately persuasive. “Because White’s a blundering fool, and he can do a lot of harm.”
He tried the pipe, and put it in his side pocket.
“The cause at issue is something more important than you might imagine. I’m not at liberty to tell you much about it, so long as you’re against us. But I had your memory restored, to make you an offer.” Claypool nodded, waiting. “Perhaps you’ve guessed that I’m not acting alone. I can’t tell you much about our group, but I’m asking you to join us, Claypool—if you’re willing to help us trap White and his fellow fanatics.”
Claypool leaned wearily back in the chair.
“The advantages to you are considerable,” Ironsmith urged him. “We can arrange for you to keep your memory—and your mind is really too line, Claypool, to be wasted under euphoride. You can even free yourself from this close supervision by the humanoids, if you’ll join us.
“Now what about it?”
Claypool sat up again, bleakly alert. His mind could see little Dawn Hall, brave with that red ribbon in her hair. He felt a warm surge of loyalty to her and her strange companions. But he didn’t want to go back to oblivion. “Who’s with you?”
Ironsmith merely shook his head. “At least I must know one thing.” Claypool stared at the open-faced, fresh-shaven man, and shivered inwardly. “Did you—or this mysterious group of yours—remove any military equipment from the vicinity of the old military installation here?”
“That doesn’t matter—what’s your answer?”
Claypool straightened.
“Send back your machines!” Claypool gulped, and tried to lower his voice. “I don’t know what kind of man you are, Ironsmith—or even if you are a man!” He felt a tingle, at the back of his neck. “But I’m not turning against my kind.”
Solemnly, almost sadly, Ironsmith pursed his lips.
“I’d hoped for something a little more sane,” he murmured softly. “I had hoped you had learned enough to accept the humanoids, and face reality. Because we’re offering you a splendid opportunity, Claypool. Why not open your hand, and take it?”
Claypool merely blinked.
“I’m sorry.” His low voice was calmly unresentful. “We do need your help. I’m sorry to see you wasted, when you might do so much. But we’ve other ways of getting at White.”
His tweedy shoulders tossed carelessly.
“For the man’s more fool than philosopher, and his own folly will give him up. Before his criminal blundering has done any desperate harm, I hope! But I don’t like to abandon you.”
His voice dropped, hopefully. “We can open a new life to you, Claypool. We can show you a width and breadth and depth of living you never dreamed of, and a splendor of life you never imagined. Won’t you trust me, and come along?”
Claypool shuddered in the chair, gulping painfully.
“Trust you?” He laughed sardonically. “Get out!”
Ironsmith shrugged regretfully, and turned to the door. It slid open. He glanced back, with an odd little grin of baffled sympathy, and then stepped quickly out. Three black machines came in. One of them carried a hypodermic needle.
“At your service, Dr. Claypool,” it purred sweetly. “Do not be alarmed. We are acting under the Prime Directive, to make you happy again. This injection will cause you no pain.”
Two of them caught his arms. Watching the bright needle, he tried to flinch away from it. The black hands tightened on him, soft and gentle and invincible. He watched the flashing, efficient stab of the needle.
It didn’t reach his arm.
XVIII.
In that first staggered moment, Claypool thought that his own frantic effort had somehow broken the unbreakable grasp of the machines. He thought he had fallen, somehow, out of the padded chair. He sprawled on cold, hard-packed sand, and sat up dazedly.
“Oh, Dr. Claypool!” Unbelievingly, he recognized the clear, thin voice of little Dawn Hall. “Did we hurt you?”
His bewildered eyes found the child, and then White and Lucky Ford, Graystone and Overstreet. They stood spaced around him in a wide-circle, all watching him, all strangely taut. Their strained faces slowly relaxed.
Little Ford mopped his dark, seamed face with a handkerchief. Graystone the Great dipped his red nose in an awkward, formal bow of welcome. Overstreet nodded vaguely, blinking dim eyes. Majestic still in that worn silver cloak, in flowing, fiery mane and beard, White came striding to help him rise.
“So we got you, after all!” the huge man drawled softly. “Welcome to our refuge!”
Grasping White’s great hand, Claypool came up awkwardly. Carefully, he tried his leg. The knee felt weak, but it bore his weight without pain. The damp sand felt cold under his thin slippers. He peered around him, blinking dazedly.
The uneven walls about him were water-carved limestone. Overhead was a rough natural dome, incrusted with stalactites and all aglitter with white calcite crystals. The air seemed damp and cold. Somewhere he heard a thin whisper of water running.
“Where—?” he whispered shakenly. “Where is this?”
“Perhaps we’re safer it you don’t know the precise astrographical coordinates,” White told him. “But we’re some hundreds of feet underground. A fortunate spot. There is running water, and air enough for ventilation, but no passage big enough for anything else.”
“Then you . . . I—” Claypool shivered, speechless.
White nodded his immense, shaggy head.
“Your own unconscious mental resistance caused us to fail, the first time we tried to bring you here. That’s why we didn’t warn you, this time. We just waited for a likely moment, when you wanted to get away from Starmont.”
“I certainly did!” Claypool shuddered again, and feebly grinned. “One more second—”
Tremulous with a voiceless gratitude. Claypool stumbled around that circle, shaking hands with the men and the child who had snatched him away from oblivion. He saw a change in them.
Before, when he met them at Dragonrock, they had been new recruits of White’s, just rescued from madhouse, gutter, and jail. Now they were shaved and clean and better fed. Old Graystone was not quite so gaunt, Ford not quite so nervously cynical, Overstreet not so pale.
“We’ve been watching Ironsmith.” White’s great hand fell on his shoulder, heartily. “I’m glad you didn’t sell out to him and his evil machines—because we never will.” His blue eyes had a glint of savage purpose. “Come along, Claypool. Let me show you what we’ve done, and tell you why we need you now.”
Claypool swayed again, as he stepped on his right leg, and White put out a mighty arm to steady him.
“Did you know that Ironsmith almost caught us at Dragonrock, after he went over to the mechanicals?” the big man rumbled bitterly. “We weren’t expecting any treachery, then. I trusted him, and I was even hoping he would join us.”
Claypool limped anxiously after him, to see the sanctuary. The flat sandy floor was scarcely fifty feet across low-roofed recesses, under the edges of the glistening dome, were rudely curtained off for living quarters. Little Dawn Hall proudly displayed a tiny room of her own.
One jeweled alcove made a kitchen. A thrumming generator, in another, gave current for the lights strung across the shining roof. Claypool kept peering at the equipment, still bewildered.
“You brought all this, by teleportation?”
“There’s no other way,” White assured him, “but we’re improving. Our chief worry, now, is the danger of leaving clues for Ironsmith and his gang.”
The hard clay floor, in another low chamber, had been leveled to support a long workbench. The charred and acid-bitten wood was piled with crucibles, small tools, and silver-colored metal ingots.
“Here’s where we need you, Claypool.” Dramatic in the silver cloak. White gestured, with his great emphatic arm. “To help us build the new relays, and change the Prime Directive.”
Claypool looked up from the furnaces and lathes and drills, back to that imperative giant. The cold fire blazing in his eyes might be fanaticism, Claypool thought, but he seemed much too sure for a blunderer, too keenly alert for any fool.
“Just the interpretation,” the big man added. “I’ve no quarrel with the actual words—To Serve and Obey, and Guard Men from Harm. But the humanoids apply them a little too efficiently!”
Thoughtfully, he weighed a heavy ingot on his palm.
“Ironsmith would call me a criminal anarchist, I imagine, and he’d sneer. But the worth and the dignity and the rights of every individual are the basis of my philosophy—and the cause I’m lighting for.”
His voice throbbed with a restrained intensity of feeling.
“You’ve heard the old bull that a benevolent despotism is the best possible government. That was what Sledge believed when he made the humanoids—but he made them benevolent enough and despotic enough to show the unsoundness of that.”
He put the ingot down, with a crashing force.
“I’m an equalitarian,” he boomed. “I believe in equal rights for all. I want to modify the Prime Directive, to assure every man and woman the same freedom that only Ironsmith and a few other double-dealers now enjoy. Even the freedom to do wrong! And here’s the change I want to build into that relay grid that runs the humanoids.”
He paused to fumble impatiently in a clutter of drawings and notes stacked under a white metal block, and then read scrawled words from the back of an old envelope.
“Here’s my statute of limitations, to amend the Prime Directive: ‘We the humanoids cannot destroy human freedom, for that is more precious than the life of man. We cannot move even to aid any man, unless commanded by that man or another. And we cannot restrain any man, except when that restraint may be necessary to prevent direct injury to another. For men must be free!’ ”
Claypool gulped a long, eager breath.
“I’m with you,” he whispered. “What is to be done?”
White replaced the tattered envelope under the ingot. He caught Claypool’s hand in a grasp that snapped his knuckles, yet his massive face was grave.
“The undertaking is surrounded with every sort of dangerous vicissitude,” he rumbled solemnly. “A nearly impossible task, which must be attempted with inadequate means, in defiance of such ruthless enemies as Ironsmith, in the face of hazards that even Overstreet, can’t quite foresee. Until you were here, I saw no hope at all.”
Claypool peered at the bench, and swallowed uneasily.
“Just what do you expect of me?”
“First, I must explain what we’ve done. I believe I told you that I once fought with old Sledge, against the humanoids. If we had stayed together, I think we could have won. Because the job is going to take a combination of physical and paraphysical means.
“The changing of those relays, you see, is a physical engineering job. But the grid was built so that it must protect itself from change. It does that, effectively. No man can approach within three light-years of Wing IV—not by any physical means.
“But Dawn has been there.”
Startled, Claypool looked around for the child. She had followed them about the cave at first, and now he expected to see her playing somewhere on the sand. He couldn’t find her.
“She’s gone, right now,” White rumbled softly, “after palladium. Overstreet has discovered an alluvial deposit of it, you see, on a planet where men and the humanoids have never been. The nuggets are nearly pure, bearing only traces of rhodium and ruthenium. Dawn gathers them, and we smelt them here.”
“That little child,” Claypool whispered blankly. “Gone to another world, alone?”
“A necessary risk. We’ve got to have the metal. We reduce the danger as far as we can. Overstreet is watching her. The chief hazard is from Ironsmith and his peculiar allies.”
Claypool nodded uneasily, asking:
