The Forgetful Robot, page 11
They were carrying boxes out of the ship and stacking them on the ground. Professor Gardner was conferring with two of the Venusian leaders. He used a translator box, which is a unit that you can talk into in one language and have the words come out in another.
As we approached, I got the impression that Professor Gardner and the Venusians didn’t trust each other. I think, from what I saw, that the Venusians wanted the treasure loaded before they unloaded the arms they’d brought. Gardner wanted the arms unloaded first. So they were making an even exchange. Loading and unloading at the same time.
When we reached the site, Gardner was pretty busy and only gave us a casual glance—as though he’d known we’d be recaptured so it wasn’t an occasion to even comment on.
He said, “Hold them in a group. I’ll get to them later.”
Bennett said, “Do you want to use Barney?”
“Not at the moment. They have their own robots. What about the killer?”
“We got the information. It’s up in one of the towers. Barney can show us.”
“Then go get it. These Venusians respect only force.”
Bennett said, “Come with me, Barney. Show me where the killer robot is.”
I had to make a decision. Normally, I would not have obeyed unless the order had come from Professor Dixon. But I was only under a general order from him that brought my judgment into play, and I was certain that if I’d refused they would have deactivated me.
So we went into the city and up the tower steps to where Mildred was parked. Bennett followed behind. First, he started to activate her. But then he drew his hand back, returning to the head of the stairs, where he could run if anything happened.
Then he said, “Activate the robot, Barney.”
I obeyed.
He went down the stairs a little farther and called back, “Follow me, Seven Four.”
We went down the stairs and back to where the loading was going on. The Venusians stopped work when they saw Mildred, and there was a look of satisfaction on Professor Gardner’s face.
He said, “Bring it here, Bennett. Stand it there by the arms.” Then he spoke into the box to the Venusian leaders. “All right, now, let’s have less of this nonsense. You’ll be paid for your load and we’ll have no trouble if you complete your end of the bargain.”
They went back to work but were more subdued now.
Without anybody telling me, I went back and stood by the prisoners. I tuned my diaphragms up very high so that I could listen to everything Professor Gardner said.
But suddenly my attention was drawn to Granddad Ravencraft. He had straightened up and was frowning at the pile of boxes containing the arms from Venus. He pointed at them.
“What are those, pray tell?”
Slezak said, “Guns, my friend. Ray guns, rechargers, heavy nuclear missile throwers, cobalt rifles—”
“Does he plan to declare a war?”
“He plans to equip an army.”
It seemed strange to me that Granddad Ravencraft should be interested in the arms, but he was. I tried to think of how they would tie in with Shakespeare, but I could not. When Shakespeare was writing his plays, humans hadn’t invented all the new ways to kill each other.
But then Granddad said, “This is awful. The world must not again be hurled into the hell of war.” He stood silent for a few moments, while Larry and Janet went to him. But he did not need them. He pushed them gently away.
“Man must learn. The cruelty of Rome must not become the heritage of the world.”
I didn’t think Granddad was quoting from anything now. He was speaking his own words about something he felt very deeply.
“Delenda est Carthago must not become the slogan of the New Age.”
“Delenda est Carthago” was a quote from somewhere, but I didn’t think from Shakespeare. I’d heard it or read it in relation to Rome, an ancient empire that once ruled the world. Carthage was another nation and a Carthagenian general named Hannibal tried to cross the mountains with a lot of elephants to conquer Rome, but he failed. The trouble between Rome and Carthage was called the Punic Wars. Carthage lost two of them, and then a Roman politician kept saying, “Delenda est Carthago!” which meant, “Carthage must be destroyed!” The politician’s name was Cato, and he kept repeating those words until other Romans finally believed him, and they went to Carthage and leveled the city and killed all the people. That was the Third Punic War.
All of which didn’t matter much on Old Mars thousands of years later. But it made me think how humans don’t mind killing each other but are usually very careful with their robots. Maybe that is because humans do not cost anything, while robots are very expensive.
Gardner was paying no attention to Granddad. I watched him, and he seemed keyed up. But even that wasn’t quite the word. I thought exalted was a better one. Human emotions are very difficult for robots to understand, so I wasn’t in a position to analyze intelligently.
I could only try to evaluate the situation in terms of whether Roger Gardner would change his mind and not kill the Ravencrafts and Larch and Slezak. With the things I’d done having failed, I could only tell myself that killing them made no logical sense whatever and that Gardner would realize this when the time came.
But I was wrong. When the unloading was almost finished, I heard Gardner tell Wilson, “When the last arms case is on the pile, we will stage the execution. Is the killer robot ready?”
Wilson nodded, but he was uneasy. He said, “I think you’re making a mistake. Why don’t you think it over. You can always execute them later.”
“You don’t understand,” Gardner replied. “The Venusians must carry word of what happens here to the other planets. On this day, the Zarkians and the peoples of the other forbidden cities of Old Mars become a sovereign nation. There must be a dramatic incident to mark this as a turning point in history. The blight of colonization must stop here.”
I could hear all this because I had my diaphragms tuned to pick up over a wide range. Wilson left the place where Gardner was standing and crossed over to where Bennett was directing the Venusian robots.
Wilson said, “He’s going to do it. He’s out of his mind.”
“Did you tell him that when word gets out the Space Authority will rain down on this place with everything it’s got?”
“He expects to be hit. You know that. He thinks it’s necessary to make these people form an army and fight back.”
“Well, it’s not our responsibility. We’re getting out of here. We won’t be giving the order to the killer robot.”
“Is our stuff on board?”
Bennett nodded. “And it cost plenty to make the deal.”
“It’s worth it,” Wilson muttered, and the whispered conference broke up.
The unloading was almost finished now. The last crate was coming off the Venusian ship. I could only stand there and wait, knowing that my efforts had not helped anybody.
It was not a good feeling… .
14.
Not Born to Greatness
I’d suspected that Gardner had planned to use Mildred for the execution, and now I was sure of it when he turned to where she stood waiting and said, “Seven Four—come here.”
Mildred came toward him. He pointed to where we were standing in a group and said, “Destroy!”
It was the key word to which Mildred had been programmed when they turned her into a killer.
She turned and came toward us, moving into range. Larch tried to run, but Slezak grabbed him viciously by the arm. A big change had come over Slezak. I’d noticed it but hadn’t paid much attention to it. He demonstrated it now by staying with the group—in the same way that Professor Dixon had refused to let me carry him across the desert to safety.
As Mildred came closer, I got set to charge, timing myself to hit her just before she came within spraying range and maybe knocking her over. I probably wouldn’t even get close enough to touch her, but I still had to try to carry out the order Professor Dixon had given me.
Then I thought of something—an even wilder hope—an idea I evaluated quickly, which would be my last effort to obey Professor Dixon’s general order, because the time had run out. I tuned my transmitter to its highest pitch and yelled, “Mildred—protect Richard and Damen! Gardner wants to hurt them. You must protect Richard and Damen!”
There wasn’t much similarity between Larry and Janet and the children Mildred had been in charge of on Earth. But there might be enough visual impact to drive through Mildred’s altered memory bank.
I never found out whether there was or not. The audio impact may have been enough. Mildred repeated after me, “Richard and Damen—” as though her components were at war among themselves. She stopped moving and stood there.
Then she turned her back on the group and lifted her spray gun and began firing. The first stream hit two Venusians who were standing by. It cut them in two, the color of their skin turning to a dull brown as they fell.
Wilson cried, “Look out. The killer’s gone berserk!”
Bennett didn’t say anything. He was running toward the ship.
Mildred veered her course now and was moving in a straight line toward Gardner. He ran too, but he kept his wits about him and called to Wilson, “Use your gun. Knock out its optube!” He kept on yelling orders as he ran around the arms pile, putting it between himself and Mildred.
A killer robot can of course be knocked out if appropriately heavy weapons are available. But Gardner didn’t have any. He could only depend on Wilson’s small ray gun, with a much shorter range than Mildred’s acid spray.
But Wilson showed he was not a coward when he yelled back, “I’ll try to get in from behind.”
“Idiot! It’s made of impervium.”
“But I’m not,” Wilson replied grimly, and circled around behind.
Mildred went straight ahead, and when the acid from her gun hit the front of the weapon boxes, Gardner realized the mistake he’d made—drawing her in that direction. He went into a panic as the acid began eating through, destroying the boxes and the arms inside, the way fire would destroy paper.
“The guns! The guns! Do something! Stop the monster! Kill it!”
Instead of running away from the arms pile, Gardner moved in closer and tried to pull some of the boxes out of range. This was a foolish thing to do, because it kept Mildred’s acid gun aimed on the armament pile. But Gardner wasn’t thinking very clearly. This happens to humans sometimes when they are faced by the unexpected. He appealed to anyone who would listen. “Pull them out! Help me! Save the guns!”
But the acid kept hitting the boxes. All it took was a few drops on each box, but far more than that was spraying out of Mildred’s gun.
Wilson was moving up behind Mildred now. He yelled at her. The sound hit her diaphragms, and as she turned, Wilson dropped to one knee in time to avoid the swift arc of the sawblade. As she went on past in the circle, he straightened and fired into her diaphragm. The bullet destroyed both diaphragms and her optube also. She staggered from the shock and circled more slowly. This allowed Wilson to circle with her. He opened her control panel and fired into it, wrecking vital components.
Mildred moved forward three steps before she fell. When she hit the ground, she didn’t move anymore.
Wilson backed away. There was an odd look on his face. No longer caught up in the excitement of the action, he stared at the gun in his hand. It was as though he were asking himself, What am I doing here?
Then he ran toward the Venusian ship. Bennett, who had been standing and staring from a safe distance, followed him. This started a movement among the Venusians. With Mildred—Gardner’s most potent weapon—destroyed and their treasure safely aboard, they saw no reason to stay around.
Pie and Gay appeared from somewhere and went to stand close to Professor Dixon. Then, gradually, the Shadow People began coming out of the city. There in the daylight, they looked pale and colorless—the way people would look who had spent all of their lives out of the sun.
I wondered what had brought them out. Then I saw that their whole attention was on Mildred. They moved forward slowly, staring at her in awe, as though she and not Gardner had been the object of their fear, which seemed entirely logical.
But logic does not always stand up. As soon as I’d formed my opinion, they began shaping into a line, four abreast, and moved forward with a melancholy chirping that had a rhythm to it. They were singing.
The line came to the place where Mildred was lying, and the ones in front picked her up, as the sad chirping continued, and turned back toward the city. Their whole attitude was one of sorrow and reverence.
Gardner had not moved. He had only turned his eyes from the Venusian ship, which had now jetted off, to the Zarkians. I watched, waiting for something to happen, although just about everything that could happen had already taken place. Professor Dixon was the first to move. He walked slowly to where Gardner stood and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Roger—?” he said gently.
Gardner turned his eyes slowly. “They didn’t understand.”
“No.”
“I couldn’t make them understand. They saw me as their enemy. When the robot destroyed the weapons, it became their hero. They must have thought the armaments had been brought here to destroy them,” said Gardner sadly.
Professor Dixon again spoke gently, as though he pitied Roger Gardner. “Weren’t they right, Roger? In the long run the weapons would have been their destruction. Perhaps these people are wiser than you gave them credit for being.”
“Then why couldn’t they see the vision of what destiny held for them?”
“I think, Roger, because it was your vision, not theirs.”
Roger Gardner did not answer. He stared after the Zarkians and turned his eyes at the pile of ruined armaments. Then the shock of what had happened seemed to hit him. His eyes widened.
“My God! What have I done?”
“Easy, Roger, easy. You need rest.”
With his arm around Roger Gardner’s shoulders, Professor Dixon led him slowly toward the Gallant Lady. The rest followed silently, and I noticed that Pie and Gay were missing. They must have followed the other Zarkians back into the city.
Everybody was very quiet that night; exhausted, I guess, and they slept very heavily. They didn’t snap me off. In fact, they couldn’t, because nobody had bothered to fix my switch. So I thought about Mildred and how she had died.
Of course, she hadn’t died at all. Machines are never alive in the first place. But I liked to think of Mildred that way—a faithful robot who had died doing the job she’d been built for, protecting Richard and Damen. The fact that they were far away on Earth didn’t matter. They’d still lived in Mildred’s memory bank. She had been loyal, and no robot can be more.
During the night I heard someone get up and leave the ship, but I couldn’t tell who it was because I was in the cabin with Professor Dixon.
The next morning, when everybody woke up, they found that Professor Gardner was gone.
This necessitated a conference. Larch said, “We should have locked him in one of the cabins. He’s probably back there in the undercity figuring out new ways to kill us.”
Slezak said, “Shut up,” but he spoke while looking at Professor Dixon. So was everybody else, as though looking to him for leadership.
Professor Dixon said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m out of my depth. But I can’t bring myself to believe Roger would do that.”
It was pretty obvious that they were all out of their depth—trying to make decisions none of them was programmed for.
Professor Dixon looked at me and said, “Barney, have you any data that would help us?”
I checked in my memory bank and was able to recall a book I’d once read. It was about law. I said, “The people on this ship are not commissioned to enforce criminal statutes even if they have witnessed the breaking of such statutes.”
Larch looked relieved. “That means we can weld the port and get back to Earth.”
“Where you will be required to answer for your felonies or misdemeanors, as the case may be,” I reminded him.
Slezak said nothing, but Larch muttered, “You and your data—!”
“But Mr. Larch is right, Barney?” Professor Dixon asked. “We are not obligated to take Roger into custody?”
“Not obligated, but there is something called a citizen’s arrest, which means any citizen has a moral duty to apprehend and restrain anyone engaged in a criminal act and deliver him to the authorities.”
Larry and Janet were staring at me. Larry said, “Golly! A lawyer on top of everything else.” Which was, of course, not true. Reading a book doesn’t even make a human a lawyer, let alone a robot.
What I said worried Professor Dixon. He said, “What Roger did was certainly—”
I went on. “However, citizen’s arrests do pose certain dangers. If charges are not proved in a court of law, the accused has recourse. He can sue for damages and can usually collect.”
“I don’t know—I just don’t know—”
We were interrupted by a voice calling from outside, “Professor Dixon.” We went to the port and saw Roger Gardner standing outside. He looked pale and hurt and all alone somehow. He even seemed shrunken, but then I realized this was because his head and shoulders were no longer erect. The way humans feel inside has a lot to do with how they look outside.
“I’m not going back with you,” Gardner said. Professor Dixon could only reply, “Oh—I see.”
“My place is here with my people.”
“You have plans to—?”
“No plans. It is over, finished. I was not born for greatness.”
“You do not look well, Roger.”
“I only thank God now that things worked out as they did. Not that my ideas have changed. But I was not the man for it.”
“Roger—you were wrong. These people will not be exploited. Because of one incident, you shouldn’t—” Professor Gardner did not seem to hear him. He said, “You will, of course, report what has happened here, and when you do, they will come—the Space Patrol—and when they arrive, I will be here. Tell them that, please. They will find me with my people.”
