“On one condition,” Claypool rapped. “Dawn comes with me.”
“I’m sorry, but that is out of the question.” Ironsmith seemed regretful, and apologetic. “We can still rescue you, Claypool. But the child used paraphysical powers against the Central, in this unfortunate attack, and there’s nothing we can do for her.”
A bleak hostility shook Claypool’s voice again.
“Then there’s nothing you can do for me.”
“I’m sorry for you, and Ruth will be hurt.” Ironsmith shrugged his lean shoulders, and Claypool hated him again, for his arrogant security in all the spoils of his duplicity. “But I imagine the humanoids will need another guinea pig, to test their new relays.”
He looked at Dawn, and she spoke.
“At your service, Mr. Ironsmith.” Her voice was a thin, high whine. “Since Dr. Claypool refuses to enter the Compact, we must keep him hi our care. His extensive knowledge of rhodomagnetics makes him dangerous to the Prime Directive.”
Beyond her, the other door had opened. Two identical mechanicals came gliding through. Their dark bodies were beautiful with flowing gleams of bronze and blue, and their graceful faces were serenely kind. They came to Claypool, and Dawn spoke to him.
“At your service, sir. You must come with us.”
Smoothly as any humanoid, she moved toward that outer door. Claypool followed her, limping uneasily between the two blind intent machines.
He looked back twice. The first time, Ironsmith was still there beside the old dusty desk, tall and young and stern, watching him with a dispassionate regret. When he looked again, that gray-lit room was hushed and empty. Ironsmith must have learned to govern the exchange forces, too.
His scalp tingled and his breath went out, but his black keepers seized his elbows and hurried him after the child. Outside, a little rhodomagnetic cruiser was waiting for them. It hovered silently, just above the railing of that high balcony. The smooth oval hull of it mirrored the gray vastness of the tower and the smoky murk of the sky and the dark flatness of Wing IV, all in shimmering distortion.
The door of the craft was open. Dawn sprang up to the deck, as agile as any machine. Watchfully, the two machines assisted Claypool. The little ship rose silently. Standing between his guardian machines, Claypool looked out through the one-way transparency of the hull.
Wing IV spread out beneath him as they lifted, veiled with thin smoke and teeming with machines. Once this world had been alive—until war wrecked it, and old Sledge’s humanoids reclaimed it.
It was all leveled now. Mountain and sea were gone, and everything alive. There were only landing ramps and cradles for tall black interstellar ships, and busy ways where no man moved, and the round black mouths of the pits that let shipping down into the planet’s mechanized heart.
The cruiser dropped again, and Claypool saw their destination. It made his stomach contract, and his bare knee shudder. The two intent machines moved closer to his arms, asking softly if he wished to sit.
He didn’t sit. He stood between them, stiff and cold, and watched that unfinished dome come up ahead. The huge curve of it was strangely graceful, taller than its width. Luminous, it splashed that dark, smoky plain with a red violence.
He could see the scaffolding still about it, a dark metal veil about its sullen glow. The craft dropped nearer, and at last he found the toiling machines on the vast platforms, the merest dark insects, scarcely visible. It looked almost complete, and his heart turned sick.
“At your service, sir,” droned one of his dark guardians. “What disturbs you now?”
“I just begin to get it,” he whispered bitterly. “I begin to see what this monstrous thing is for!”
The craft swayed and tilted, propping to land, and his bad knee gave again. One of the tiny machines reached quickly to support him. He cuffed at it savagely, but it ignored his feeble blow, and held him until the deck was still again.
They came gently down on a wide stage, beside a long, windowless building. The red dome loomed beyond it, fretted with black scaffolding, immense as a strange moon rising. Claypool shrank back from it, shaken and afraid.
“Now I begin to see your ugly schemes,” he rasped at the helpful, calm machine, “I think those platinum relays are paraphysical. I think Ironsmith and his gang of renegades have taught you how to generate paraphysical energy, and told you how to build this new grid.” Something turned his voice to a dry whisper.
“And I think it’s intended to operate men.”
“That is true, sir.” His brooding eyes had moved to Dawn Hall, and now she broke out of that stark immobility, with a smooth mechanical grace which startled him. Sweetly melodious, her high, whining voice reflected nothing human.
“This new relay grid will be energized with paraphysical force, when it is done. It will be able to control the minds and bodies of men, anywhere, whenever necessary to fulfill the purpose of the Prime Directive. But it is not wicked, sir, as you imply, or evil in any way.” Her thin strange voice was bright with a merciless kindness.
“Because our only function is to secure the greatest measure of happiness for all men, under the Prime Directive. In the past, we have sometimes failed. A few unfortunate individuals, developing paraphysical abilities, have eluded our care and endangered our whole service. But this new grid, when it is done, can rule every thought and every act of every man. We shall use it to cause all men, everywhere, to do only what is good.”
Claypool stood numbed and voiceless.
“Men have need of such control,” droned the wax-white child, “because most men cannot truly control the working of their own bodies, or understand the functions of their own minds. We seek only to protect men from their own ignorance, and folly and vice. Surely that purpose is not evil, sir.”
The bow of the little craft slid open.
“Now come,” the child said. “Here is our paraphysical laboratory.”
XXIV.
Carefully, the two black machines helped Claypool down from the deck. Shivering in the red shadow of that enormous, glowing dome, he limped laboriously across the landing stage, following the mechanized child.
As he watched her, his fevered mind could see a dreadful vision, of whole worlds possessed. He saw whole peoples, moving like living puppets on the invisible strings of the perfect master machine. He glimpsed the ultimate despotism, under the Prime Directive, utterly benevolent and unthinkable.
That was to be the fruit of the monstrous Compact, between faithless men and ruthless machines, which Ironsmith had asked him to join. Claypool drew his narrow shoulders furiously straight, and spat on the landing stage, and limped bitterly after the child,
In the gray, windowless wall ahead, a narrow doorway opened Beyond was a vast, gloomy space. He glimpsed the dark loom and the metal gleam of strange machines, and a sharper apprehension checked his feet. He didn’t want to be a guinea pig.
His two intent keepers saw his hesitation.
“You need not be alarmed for yourself, sir,” came a cheery purr. “Or concerned about the child. Because our paraphysical research is very efficiently conducted. We are careful to cause no pain, or any needless bodily harm. The individual awareness is always completely suspended, in persons under paraphysical control.”
Still Claypool didn’t move. He didn’t want his mind dissected, not even by the latest and most efficient methods. But the two guardian machines moved in swiftly, to grasp his shrinking arms. They thrust him forward, calmly and gently, into the laboratory.
It was a whispering cavern of shadowy terror, for the blind machines had no need of light. The only illumination came through the bars of an endless row of metal cages built along the foot of one high wall—cages very much like those Claypool had seen containing experimental animals, for biological research.
In that enormous space, those cages seemed quite small at first. The dim light from them spread across the endless floor, and diffused upward toward the unseen ceiling. Here and there it outlined t
he dark bulk of some immense unknown mechanism; it picked out some polished metal surface: or it glistened briefly on the sleekness of some tiny, hastening humanoid.
His bad knee began to tremble painfully, and he tried to stop again. The two tiny machines lifted him deftly, and carried him on with an effortless strength. Ahead of them, the barred door of one empty cage slid upward, actuated by a hidden relay. They set him down inside.
One of them stayed with him.
“You must wait here,” it droned softly. “We shall be ready soon for the tests of the new grid in which you are to be used. In the meantime, we are at your service. You may ask for anything you wish.”
Behind him, the door locked itself again, with a muffled, disconcerting click. His black guardian stood abruptly motionless. The dim gray glow of the radiant-painted walls glistened faintly in its naked sleekness, and gleamed on its bright steel eyes.
Claypool muttered his sardonic thanks, and looked about the cage. He found a narrow cot, a chair, a small table. Through a narrow door behind, he saw a white, tiny bath. The gray-glowing partitions shut off the other cages, but he could see out into the dark beyond the bars.
He limped wearily to the cot, and sat down on the edge of it. The air seemed cold, and it was bitter with a penetrating antiseptic smell. The gray walls suddenly squeezed in upon him, and the thick dark beyond became a crushing pressure. He couldn’t breathe, and his sore stomach writhed, and he was sick with claustrophobia.
His black keeper came quickly to him.
“You have no reason for alarm, sir,” its golden monotone assured him benignly. “For you will feel no pain at all. In fact, as a very distinguished physicist, you should desire to aid our paraphysical research.”
He stared up bleakly, at its dark blind face.
“We follow the scientific methods which other men have taught us, under the Compact,” it went on brightly. “The basis of all our work is a simple assumption. If paraphysical forces cause mechanical effects, then mechanical means can generate paraphysical forces.”
He tried to listen. Sitting cold and ill on that hard narrow cot, he tried to breathe the bitter air. He tried to push back the cold gray glow of the closing walls, and tried to endure the smothering oppression of the dark. He rubbed his swollen knee, and tried to understand.
“We have proved that assumption,” purred the machine. “With the aid of a few loyal men, we have designed instruments for the detection and analysis of the paraphysical forces. Other disloyal men, foolishly attacking the Prime Directive, have provided experimental subjects.”
Shivering on the cot, Claypool wondered what had happened to little Dawn Hall. He had lost her in the dark, and he couldn’t see the other cages. He couldn’t find her now.
“As another scientist, sir, you can follow our research methods. Our subjects, under strict experimental controls, are caused to exert paraphysical forces. We measure those forces, investigate their origins and determine their effects, and duplicate them by mechanical means.”
Claypool watched the blind face before him, and fought his smother his mind held on to a last desperate hope.
“Unfortunately, we are not creative,” that silvery voice sang on. “But loyal scientists have derived new hypotheses from our accumulated data, and suggested new experiments to test them. And now we are near our final goal.”
Claypool had slumped abjectly back against the cold metal partition. With both clammy hands, he nursed his throbbing knee. And his mind held on to a last desperate hope.
“The final result of our research will be the completed paraphysical grid. Any human body under its direction will be operated far more efficiently than is possible by the slow and feeble natural brain. It can control the body to prevent clumsy accidents, and eliminate all disease, and mend the decay of time. It can heal mental illness. It can even stimulate the body to repair deformities, and replace missing members. It can make every human being young and fair, forever.”
Claypool shrank back from gleaming steel orbs of the machine. His narrow shoulders pressed hard against the cold wall behind him, shuddering. And he clutched desperately at his last thin thread of hope.
“So you see that our methods are sound and our goal is good, sir,” his tiny keeper finished serenely. “You see that you have nothing at all to fear. As a scientist, your love of truth and your sense of duty toward your kind should make you glad to offer your own small contribution, toward this greatest possible humanitarian undertaking.”
That golden melody abruptly ceased. In absolute efficiency, the humanoid ceased all movement. Claypool sat before it on the cot, nursing his knee and his feeble hope.
Desperately, he clung to the memory of a sealed and secret limestone cavern, that no humanoid could enter. White, he thought, must still be safe there, yet unvanquished. His three adepts, Graystone and Overstreet and Ford, must still be with him, toiling desperately to turn their freakish paraphysical powers into a new science of the mind. Perhaps, Claypool dared to hope, White might survive this last defeat, and somehow find a better weapon.
“At your service, sir,” his tiny keeper droned again. “You should let yourself relax, and make the best of this brief delay. If you are hungry, you may have your tray at once. If you wish to sleep—”
That was all that Claypool heard, for he saw a huge, red-bearded figure striding out of the dark beyond the cages. He sat breath-taken for a moment, unbelieving. But he knew the beard, and the worn silver cloak, and the massive, shaggy head.
The striding giant was White.
The feeble strand of Claypool’s hopeless hope became a mighty thing. He lurched to his feet, and his knee was strong again. He darted past his frozen keeper, and tried to shake the massive gray bars in the door of his cage.
“White!” he shouted. “Here I am—”
But that tall stalking figure ignored his urgent voice. It went on by. It didn’t even turn its great, fiery head. He had the merest glimpse of its face, strangely stiff and pale. And it marched on by.
All his hope went with it.
His knee shuddered under him, and he clutched the gray bars with weak and stricken hands. For he had seen the eyes of that stalking thing, and the blue sullen blaze of White’s old hate was dead in them now. They were distended, huge and dark and blank, sightless as the metal orbs of the machines.
He had seen its face. Still and white behind the splendid beard, it was smiling out of some far place of cold forgetfulness. That unchanging smile somehow reflected the serene benevolence of the humanoids. It was beyond hope or hatred, free of all feeling.
And the movements of that stalking thing, he realized dully, had nothing characteristic of White. Its striding gait had been too quick and sure. Its feet had fallen too lightly, without sound. Like Dawn Hall, it was now a mechanical puppet of the grid.
And it was not alone.
Clinging to the bars, Claypool saw the others. They came marching toward the cages, out of the whispering dark. Still tall and gaunt, old Graystone was no longer awkward now, and the red of his nose had faded to a putty-gray. Overstreet, for all his puffy bulk, moved lightly as a child. No longer nervous now, little Lucky Ford came gliding with a serene mechanical felicity.
Claypool found no voice to call again, and none of them seemed aware of him. All their eyes had blind, distended pupils, and all their faces smiled coldly out of some remote oblivion. They all walked too quickly, too lightly, too silently.
A parade of automatons, they passed on by.
Claypool gripped the bars and stared into the busy, murmuring dark. But his eyes saw nothing except the monstrous shape of final defeat, and he started when his keeper touched his arm.
“At your service, sir,” it whined solicitously. “You will only tire your injured leg, with standing too long. You should bathe now, and let us massage your knee. And then you should sleep.”
He turned and limped obediently toward the tiny bath behind the cage. He let his keeper take his arm and help support hi
s weight. For he was beaten. There was nothing left to do. He nodded at the way those smiling automatons had gone, and whispered listlessly: “How did you capture them?”
“We found them when we took the mind of the child. They were hiding in a cave that had no physical entrance, but that did not protect them. Paraphysical impulses from the energized test section of the new grid reached into it, and took hold of them.”
Claypool had paused, dazed and ill.
“Come along and let us bathe you,” urged the small machine. “Now we can only massage your knee. As soon as additional sections of the grid can be energized, however, we shall try them to hear the damaged ligaments.”
Claypool limped along with it, passively. He let it put him to bed, and tried to forget the bars that shut him in. Lying in the narrow cot, he closed his eyes to shut out its blind benevolence, and tried to solve a riddle.
He had no purpose left, but still he was a scientist. He had learned the habit of fitting facts together, to form new patterns of the truth. Now, when he lay there alone and hopeless, his sick mind turned back to find relief in that old pursuit.
He attacked a riddle old as science—the atom. Electromagnetics has never quite blueprinted atomic architecture—because the straining electrostatic forces, the mutual repulsions of the like particles captive in the nucleus, were all disruptive. Electromagnetic atoms simply couldn’t exist.
He had tried this same riddle many times before. Once, years ago at Starmont, he thought he had found the whole answer to it—in the basic equation of the rhodomagnetic field—until young Ironsmith so casually and cheerily proved him wrong.
The dimensions of the time-quantum were implicit in that equation, and those dimensions placed a limit on electrostatic forces, because their velocity of propagation was finite in time. Electrostatic forces must, therefore, cease, at subnuclear distances. The remaining known component, of timeless rhodomagnetic forces, served to explain the stability of the lighter atoms—almost.
The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy Page 23