Collected short fiction, p.649
Collected Short Fiction, page 649
“Sir, you cannot interrupt,” the robot intoned, its voice ringing like tossed pebbles against the low, blue dome.
“I can, Robot-inspector. I am your superior in the Companions of the Star. I am Monitor Andreas Quamodian.”
“Even so, sir,” pealed the robot, “you cannot control me today. Our new compact allows no official duties to interfere with voluntary religious activities on Starday. Teaching this class, Monitor Quamodian, is my voluntary religious activity.”
Andy Quam stood his ground, disdaining the effector that tried to wave him away. “Robot, an emergency exists.” He heard the ripple of excitement from the children and lowered his voice. “A very grave emergency, I’m afraid. Three plasma bolts from the sun have just struck near here. Human beings may have been injured, even killed.”
Gently but firmly, the dark tip of the effector coiled around his arm, propelled him irresistibly toward the benches. “You must wait, sir,” sang the robot as the staring children tittered. “Be seated. Be still. Be attentive, all of you, as I resume the wonderful story of the Visitants and their fusorian gifts to men.”
Andy Quam muttered under his breath, but clearly it was no use. He stalked back down the aisle to the back benches, where Rufe gave him an improving grin. “You’re okay, preacher! We don’t like robots either.”
“Hush, boy,” said Andy Quam as severely as the robot. He sat glowering bleakly at the dark case of the robot, where its mark number was blazoned just under the bright-starred orbital pattern of Almalik. Perhaps the robot was hard to manage today, but tomorrow would be different.
“The fusorians,” sang the robot melodiously, retracting its effector and floating higher toward the blue dome, “are older than the stars, and all of them are very wonderful. They are microscopic creatures that live by fusing hydrogen atoms, and they evolved in space—so long ago that they divided into many millions of different species. The Reefs of Space are built of atoms which some fusorians create. The Visitants are a special race of fusorians which live like symbiotes, inside the bodies of creatures like men.”
“Bugs!” hissed the red-headed boy to Quamodian. “My dad says they’re nothing but parasites!”
“In the wonderful partnership of man and fusorian,” the robot trilled, “each benefits, neither is harmed. For the Visitants are wonderfully wise and just. They have evolved transcience intellectic patterns which knit their colonies together and link them all with the sentient stars. And so we are all united, all joined into the great multiple Citizen named Cygnus, whose spokesman star is Almalik.”
“Slaved, you mean,” whispered the red-headed boy.
“That is,” sang the robot, its oval * of plasma pulsing rhapsodically* “so are we joined if we accept the gift of the Visitants. On the great day when you join the Star they will jump in a fat golden spark to your skin. Their colonies will penetrate every cell of your body. They win destroy all marauders and all wild cells, and keep you young forever. They bring you utter happiness, and utter peace. This is the gift of the Visitants.”
“Hogwash,” the redhead muttered. “Preacher, why don’t you make him shut up?”
“And here with us on this Starday,” cried the singing voice of the robot, “we are fortunate, children, blessed by the Visitants. For we have with us a Monitor of the Companions of the Star!”
Lightninglike, a pale effector stabbed forth and burst in a shower of light over Andy Quam’s head, as the children turned and stared. “For great Almalik can only help us and guide us, he cannot fight for his own right cause. So we Companions fight for him, Monitor Andreas Quamodian here as well as, more humbly, my poor robot self.” Quam swallowed angrily, torn between the desire to stalk out of the room and the yearning to leap to his feet and denounce this willful robot who spoke of duty but would not help him in the emergency that had blasted the mountains.
“Of course,” the robot added delicately, “Monitor Quamodian and myself do not view all questions in the same light. Sometimes we differ. Sometimes, perhaps, one of us is wrong. But that too is just and proper, for the peace of the Star keeps us free, while joining us in fellowship.
It bobbed soundlessly for a moment, as though entranced with its own words, while its pale oval of plasma blushed briefly blue. “Now we are finished,” it said at last “Children, you may leave. Monitor Quamodian, I thank you for being with us today.”
And Andy Quam pushed furiously down the aisle, through the knots of chattering children, to confront the robot. “Robot-inspector,” he cried, “how do you fight for Almalik when you won’t even help me in this important matter?”
“Patience, Monitor Quamodian,” purred the robot “There are evil men and evil stars who reject the universal good of all. I join you gladly in fighting them, but under our compact Starday is—”
“Is just another day!” Quamodian shouted roughly. “Rogue men are plotting with Rogue stars. There is great danger here, and it cannot wait on your convenience!”
The robot bobbed silently in its transflection field, as though it were considering what to do. Half-formed effectors budded around its case and were withdrawn; its plasma oval turned opalescent as pale colors chased themselves through it. It said at last, “The situation is grave, Monitor Quamodian.”
“You don’t begin to know how grave,” Andy Quam said bitterly. “Didn’t you hear me? Three bolts of plasma from the Sun? That would have been impossible for any star, even a non-intellectic one like the Sun, without grave provocation. So there must have been provocation—something very dangerous, very serious, going on out in the hills!”
“We have recorded that phenomenon,” the robot agreed melodiously. “It is more serious than you think, perhaps, Monitor Quamodian.
Quam brought up short, diverted. “More serious than I think? What—?”
“But nevertheless,” the robot went on, “the compact is clear. You may not compel me today. And I advise—we advise, most urgently—that you undertake no action without our aid. You see, Monitor Quamodian, we have recorded the presence of extreme hazards about which you know nothing.”
Quamodian stuttered, “I d-d-I demand that information! Right now!”
“Under the compact—”
“Blast the compact!”
“Under the compact,” the robot repeated serenely, “you may make no demands. I will do for you only what I wish to do freely, as part of my voluntary religious observance of Starday.” It hesitated for only a second, while the shimmering colors on its plasma oval spun madly, then burst into a bright, even golden fire. “Voluntarily,” it sang, “I elect to aid you now. Will you mount on my back Monitor Quamodian I will convey you at once to the site of the sun-bolts. For in truth there is danger; a rogue star has been born there, and it lives and grows!”
VII
The thing had grown now, grown even while its effectors were reaching out to the sun and the sun’s triple-stroked reply was coming back. It had passed Descartes’s Je pense, et puis je suis, and that milestone surmounted had put aside its examination of itself for examination of its world. Dark. Alone. Particles. It discovered that some of the particles were organized into macrostructures; it did not label these “matter,” but it grasped at once that they operated as vector units, a myriad whirling charged bits contriving a mean motion exerting a mean force. Warmth. Radiation. Free of the heat of its exploded womb, it sought other energy sources, tapped them, used them, owned them.
I move, it “thought”—a true thought, joining together its sense of self and an operator; and it swam slowly along its deep tunnel, reaching for new sensation and new strength. Pull. Gravity, Lift. It slid through material obstacles or brushed them aside. Behind it lay a trail of erupted doors and demolished tiers of supplies. Search. Search. It gave a name to what it was doing and a sense of a goal. Search for what?
It became aware of a kind of radiation that was itself structured, that possessed patterns that were neither random or meaningless. I?
The thing paused, palping the faint currents of sensation that emanated from distant sources. Affirmative, “I.” Not I but another.
It had recognized that there were other creatures in its world, other competitors for energy or matter or space . . . or companions.
In the cavern above, Molly Zaldivar roused briefly from the stunned shock that held her and moaned in terror. Something was studying her. Something that caused fear. Something utterly strange, that had never been in this world before.
VIII
Molly Zaldivar stirred and returned to consciousness. She lay across the crumpled legs of a laboratory stool, and one of them was stabbing her with its shattered end. The cave workshop was hissing, moaning, crackling with electrical shorts and hot, cooling metal. The pale violet corona that once had enshrouded a globe of gold now threw itself like a tattered net from point to point, dying and returning, hissing and crackling. There was smoke from somewhere outside the cave, and a heavier, choking smoke from within.
She rubbed impatiently at her forehead, drew her hand away and saw, without surprise or fear, that it was bloody. But she was alive. She tried three times before she could speak: “Cliff. Cliff, where are you?” Hawk’s voice answered at once, but weakly, more a whisper than his normal gruff tone. “I—I don’t know exactly, Molly. Are you all right?” She glanced down at herself—clothes a horror, skin bruised and cut, dirty and damp. But more or less functional, she decided. “I think so. How about you?”
She sat up, peering around. At first she could not see him. “Cliff! Are you hurt?”
Rubble stirred a few yards away, and Cliff Hawk’s whisper said: “I don’t know. Something fell on me.”
“Oh, Cliff!” Molly struggled to her feet, limped, half crawled across the piles of debris that wore all that was left of Hawk’s orderly laboratory. “Can you move? Are you in pain?”
A trash-heap stirred again, and Molly saw that what she had taken for another heap of litter was the upper part of Hawk’s body, powdered with grime and ash, but apparently intact He seemed to be jackknifed over something, some large object that was resting on what would have been his lap, facing away from her. He twisted and looked at her. It took all his strength, and his face was a mask of effort and pain. “My—legs are caught,” he gritted.
“Wait No, sit still—let me!” And forgetting her own aches she flew to free him; but it was impossible. A beam had fallen across his legs, knocking him down; some other blow had thrust him sidewise. His upper body and arms were filthy and battered, but they were free and he could move. But his legs were under half a ton of mass.
He gave up the effort and slumped forward again, across the weight that pinned him down. After a moment he said, “Where’s the Reefer? He can help—”
Molly looked around helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Call him!”
But though she shouted, there was no answer. She stood up, stretching out an arm to the tunnel wall to steady herself. The smoke was getting very thick; something bad was happening in the interior of the workshop, and she could feel a warning of heat.
She shouted for the Reefer again; still no answer. There was no help for it; if Cliff Hawk was going to get out of the trap that bound him, she was the one who would have to do it. She bent dizzily to tug again at the beam. Hawk did not speak; his eyes were closed, he seemed to be unconscious. The beam was immobile.
Molly knelt in the litter, careless of the jagged edges that were shredding her knees, and methodically began to move what could be moved: the plastic housing from one of Hawk’s instrument panels, a tangle of light metal tubing, a drift of shattered glassware. The smoke made her cough and blink, but she did not look up . . .
Not until she became aware of the sound that had been growing in her ears for seconds, now was loud, close, compelling. It was a singing rustle like a breeze through dry brush.
The sleeth.
She turned and froze. The creature hung in the air not a yard from her back, its broad, blind eyes fastened on her, its supple muscles rippling down the black, sleek skin.
For a moment she thought it was help.
But Cliff Hawk did not stir. There was no sign of the Reefer. She was alone with a helpless man and a creature from space whose whole anatomy was meant for killing.
Under the mountain the flowing essence of power that was the infant rogue star paused to consider the meaning of the sharp-edged triple slap the sun had administered to its curiosity. It was a rebuke, clearly enough. Even at ninety-odd million miles, Sol could have launched a far more devastating blow. The tiny rogue knew that as surely as it knew its own strength and knew therefore, in its simple logic, that the intent of the blow was not destruction but a warning. Star too big. It corrected itself: I too small. Get bigger.
It had not been hurt in any way by the triple blast of coiled white flame. It did not fear a harder blow; indeed, it had not evolved a concept of “fear.” But there were smaller, more controllable assemblies of particles closer at hand, and the rogue elected to investigate them.
Molly’s little car it scanned, solved, manipulated and discarded. (The little vehicle started up at the rogue’s remote command. Obediently moved forward and, when the rogue withdrew its attention, mindlessly ground ahead until one wheel dropped over the lip of the road and it slid, rolled and finally bounced to destruction down the mountain.)
More complex creations existed, the rogue found. It did not “see”; it did not distinguish visible light from any other form of radiation, but it recognized differences in frequency and kind. The differences were to it something like colors are to carbon-based life: it recognized a “green” glow which flickered violently, as though in fear or pain; a blue-violet aura which waned as the rogue observed it; emanations of all rainbow colors, and far into the infra- and ultra-frequencies, which were the sleeth, a colony of burrowing moles, an ant’s nest, even small faintly radiant points, like dust in a searchlight beam, that were the microorganisms in the air, the soil, the bodies of the larger life-forms nearby.
Something about the “green” light interested the rogue; perhaps it was the violence of its aura. It observed closely and discovered that there was an organized mass of particulate matter attached to it; the matter seemed to be acting upon that other mass of matter which appeared to be associated with the glow and the bodies of matter that were its sources. Please, Cliff, Molly was begging, help me get you out; but the rogue was a long way from having formed the concept of communication, much less acquiring a grasp of any language.
A brighter glow of vivid gold was moving toward them; the rogue reached out to encompass it and found it a new phenomenon, something between the car and the humans, far more subtle and complex in its organization than the clumsy mechanical toy it had played with for a moment, then discarded; yet simple enough to be operated. The rogue studied the sleeth for a fraction of a second, then reached out an invisible effector. It played with the sleeth, sending it through the air.
(Outside the cavemouth, the Reefer picked himself up, staggered to his feet and stared wildly about. There was blood on his grimy yellow beard, and his huge features had new scars. He croaked a question at the world, but there was no one to answer, no one in sight, nothing but gray smoke from inside the cave and crackling flame and white smoke from where something had set the cavemouth beams afire. He turned slowly, unsteady on his feet. The sun was a frightening color, roiled red and angry. The sky was clouded and ominous. He shouted for his sleeth, but there was no answer.)
The infant rogue was aware of the dull, slate-colored hue that was the Reefer. It had even recognized a connection between it and its new toy, the sleeth.
It would be interesting, the young rogue thought, to play with one of these more complex mechanisms too.
But for the moment it had not yet tired of the sleeth, arrowing it through the smoky sky, lashing out with its death-dealing claws and transflection fields at birds, rocks, tufts of grass.
The organization of matter fascinated the rogue. It decided to explore the possibilities of changing that organization, of interfering. It decided to be a god.
It thought for a moment of commandeering the Reefer for practice, as it had commandeered and operated first the electrocar, then the sleeth. It considered destroying one of the glowing living things. Any one. Destroying it so that it might be dissected and studied.
But it did not.
Already, only minutes after its first birth from its womb of plasma, the rogue had begun to develop habit patterns and “character.” Its development was not only rapid but exponential. Its first actions had been entirely random, as pure a free will as a pinball machine. But it learned. The new and generally unpleasant environment in which it found itself, it had discovered, responded pleasingly to certain kinds of manipulation. It was easy to destroy its features, one by one. The rogue could demolish a rock, kill a living thing, uproot a mountain, lash out at a sun. But once destroyed, it had learned, they were gone.
A more interesting, that is to say a more educational, way of manipulating them was to operate short of destruction. To interfere, but not to kill.
Not at first.
There was no question of conscience in this, of course, nor of mercy. The rogue was as yet totally without a superego. But it had learned for the sweet taste of pleasure.
These organized masses of matter could be sources of pleasure.
Molly dared move slightly, craning her neck to see past the sleeth.
“Reefer?” she whispered. “Are you there? Can you help me?”
But there was no human figure behind the great singing shadow of the sleeth. It hung there with its huge eyes fastened on her and then, without warning, slipped forward, darted to the wall, and hung over Cliff Hawk’s unconscious body.
