Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  Now it remained only to return to the storeroom for the other box he’d deposited there. He would bring the wires and batteries, too, this trip, and everything would be set.

  (In a dark corner of the Factory yard, the watchman stirred, groaned, and rolled over. The blow had come close to fracturing his skull—but he was hard-headed and thick-necked, and he was already beginning to grope his way back to consciousness.)

  HE CAST one more glance at the switchbox overhead. It was locked and armored, tamperproof—They’d taken that much precaution, even though They hadn’t got into the Factory at all . . . And why should they have foreseen? That would have meant that They understood a great deal which, very plainly, only this night’s work could make Them understand.

  When the dynamite went off it would, he thought, rip through the whole ground floor. The breeder vats would burst open, spilling their plasmata into the chaos of smashed equipment and glass shards. Even if not all the vats were shattered, he had made sure of a thorough job by planting the charge squarely beneath the main switchbox. All the red lights would be quenched; the heating elements would cool; the nutrient baths would cease to circulate. And the wall right here would no doubt be blown outward, letting in the cold night out there, to finish it.

  At the very least, it would be a long time before repairs could be made and the continuous process of manufacture recommenced. Perhaps—he hoped—They would see the point, and the Factory would never be rebuilt.

  He strode firmly out onto the cat-walk, going back for the second box.

  Three steps—and from behind him, shocking as a gunshot from ambush, the sound of an indrawn breath.

  He whirled, already despairing. The watchman he’d slugged should have been the only one; he knew that no guard was left inside the building at night. But, just within the door that led to the locker room, at floor level, someone stood gazing at him pointblack.

  Even in the first numb instant it struck him as strange that Their guard should be a young woman. A frightened young woman. She was frozen in shrinking back—one hand defensively lifted, palm outward and empty, but the other clenched at her side, concealing something.

  If only he’d had the exploder already connected . . . of if he’d been dose enough to grab her before she could trip an alarm . . . Sickeningly he knew it was too late.

  “Well?” he rasped, voice loud and strange in his own ears. “Get it over with! What have you got there—a gun? a signal gadget? Go ahead!”

  STILL SHE didn’t speak. Her eyes were wide, dark, unreadable in the murky light. Her clenched hand rose and slowly opened, letting what it held slip to the floor at her feet. A damp, crumpled handkerchief.

  Now he saw, even in the red dimness, that the girl’s face was streaked by tears.

  He said stupidly, “Then . . . you aren’t one of Them?”

  “Y-y-you—” she stammered, and halted. She gulped a breath, and recovered herself with surprising swiftness. “I thought you were one; I thought you were the watchman . . . I hid when I heard you coming in, but the echoes fooled me into thinking you’d gone out again; I hoped you’d left the storeroom door open.”

  His heart’s pounding gradually slackened. He nodded brusquely. “Yes . . . I get it now. Come on, I locked the door after me, but I’ll open it for you.”

  She gave him an uneasy, questioning look, but turned to mount the steps and come out onto the catwalk. If she hadn’t startled him so, he would have noticed at first that she wore the plain durable clothing of a Factory worker, one of his own kind. Her taking him for one of the others was the more pardonable, since he was dressed like a lower-class city dweller, in the garb that had served him as passport and disguise during his months of skulking freedom.

  He said gruffly, “When I worked here myself, I thought of trying a break the same way—hiding out in the storeroom, in an empty crate maybe, till everybody left, and hoping they wouldn’t check the barracks too soon . . . But I played it smart, and studied the locks here first. They’re electric; an ordinary impression won’t work. The key’s got to be just the right alloy, too. So you got locked in.”

  “That’s what happened,” she admitted quietly. Close to him now, she had a look of fragile beauty, and the mark of tears was plain to see. But he had to admire her restored composure. She’d been trapped here, alone in the red light and the shadows, for all of six hours, expecting only to be discovered and punished in the morning; and her nerve wasn’t broken.

  We’re a tough breed, he thought, and as quickly suppressed the treacherous warmth of pride.

  “Come along,” he said, and turned again toward the storeroom. Her footsteps echoed behind him as he strode unhurriedly along the walk.

  SHE SAID wonderingly, “You must have broken in. You’ve been on the outside . . . living among Them, passing as one of Them? How long?”

  “Eight months. I made my getaway from the farm labor battalion where I got sent for punching a guard here.” He sensed the additional questions that must be seething in her mind, but there was nothing to be gained by wasting time in explaining his purpose here. So much he did owe her—to give what little help he could. “I’ll give you a couple of names—contacts you can use, if you make it into the city. There’s a sort of loose-jointed organization.”

  “Others of—our people?”

  “Yes. Some other fugitives that made it; and even a few of Them, that you can trust, up to a point. Sympathizers. They feel sorry for us.” He spat the word.

  They neared the storeroom door. He stepped through into the thick darkness, slipped his flashlight from his pocket and snapped it on.

  The girl said with springing hope in her voice, “Others have managed it . . . to make a life out there. You did; I can too!”

  (Out in the yard, the watchman rose up on hands and knees and shook his dizzy head. He had as yet not got to the stage of wondering coherently what had hit him; but he staggered mechanically to his feet, going on blind animal vitality.)

  “If you want to call it a life,” he said bleakly. “You’ve got to keep your head down, all the time. Avoid attracting attention; don’t go anywhere They ask questions; hide, keep hiding. You won’t find it easy, even if you you’re lucky and don’t get caught right away and set scrubbing floors or something.”

  In the darkness, cut by the flashlight beam ahead, she was close beside him, brushed warm against him. He heard and felt her catch her breath as the realization struck her of something strangely amiss in his actions. “But . . . won’t you be coming with me . . . show me the way, help me, anyway until . . .”

  “I’ve got a job to finish here.”

  She stopped stockstill beside the outer door. “A job . . . what do you mean?” Her tone said that she had already half-guessed. He hesitated, conscious now of an urge to share the tremendous moment.

  He said flatly. “As soon as you’re on your way, I’m going to blow the Factory to hell. I’ve got enough stolen dynamite here to do it.”

  Turning, he could see her dimly against the glow from the workshop doorway. Could hear her quickened breathing. “But . . . why?”

  “You know why.”

  “No,” she said stifledly. “It’s a terrible thing. You’ve no right.”

  “WHO HAS a better right?” he demanded in a voice that was suddenly raw and quivering. “But you ought to understand; your right’s every bit as good as mine. You aren’t human, either, you came out of this very Factory, just like I did, with no father, no mother, born of a test-tube and a breeder-vat.”

  “Yes, yes,” she whispered. “But—”

  “Don’t you see? It’s got to be done. If it isn’t, They’ll go on and on. They’ll build other Factories—They’ve got big plans, the humans. But maybe this will jar Their smugness enough so They’ll give it up for a bad job. Maybe after this there’ll never be any more of us . . . no more people stamped IMITATION and despised and hated and herded like animals to do the dirtiest work . . . no more androids.” He used the ugly word delibe
rately, savoring its supreme bitterness, seeing the girl flinch—feeling, as she seemed stricken silent, a queer quilty pang that he deliberately put aside unexamined.

  He wheeled abruptly and, fumbling with key and flashlight, unlocked the massive outer door. It swung ajar, and cold air breathed inward. He almost fancied he could hear, from the red-lit shop, the click of relays boosting the current through the heating coils, compensating for a temperature drop inside the Factory, protecting the valuable cultures and growing plasmata.

  “Go on,” he grunted. “The farther you get before it blows, the more chance you’ll have. They’ll blanket the area, search . . .”

  He could feel her peering at him. with cautious flicks of the light—he was taking a chance now that someone might notice that door ajar, and there was no more time to waste—locating the other wooden box, the homemade rig of batteries and insulated wiring, where he’d left them in the storehouse clutter. “I’ve handled explosives before, outside, and I’ve got a hundred feet of wire to the exploder. But you’d better get out of here.”

  “I can’t let you do it.” But the shaking of her voice told him what he wanted to know; deep down, her instincts had taught her what his had taught him—that the cursed unbegotten race to which they both belonged could hope for no better destiny than to perish with its curse.

  She, too, had it all in her background—the humiliation; the slavery; the rancid resentments that grew into a quaking helpless hatred of Them who stood over you, aloof and uncaring, gods and torturers, the more hateful in that it seemed They had done it all without passion . . .

  She wouldn’t try to give the alarm, wouldn’t betray him.

  He stooped, hefted the heavy box and the detonating equipment, stalked slowly once again toward the red-lit doorway.

  In the doorway she grasped at his arm. “Wait—listen to me—”

  “Watch out!” he snapped. “Don’t make me drop this.”

  Her hand fell away. But he knew she was following as he trod the walkway again, through the quiet, warm, interminable crimson twilight.

  Let her do as she liked now; he’d done what he could.

  (The watchman, still dazed, had wandered around a half-circuit of the building before he realized confusedly that there was something he must attend to—and at the same time grasped the significance of the partly-open door he saw. He gulped the cold night air and, reviving, stumbled toward the telephone box beside the fence.)

  “LISTEN TO me, please.” She sounded half-breathless, but it was plain she’d been frantically preparing a reasoned speech. “You think you have to do this, because you hate Them so.

  You think They’re all evil. They aren’t really . . . but, I know, that’s no argument. Most of the time I can’t help hating Them, too. But you’re letting it blind you, so you don’t see that destroying the Factory won’t hurt Them at all; only us. So long as the Factory still runs, there are more and more of us every day, and sooner or later—”

  “More and more—for Them to despise, to be told what we are, to suffer with knowing what we are!” He plodded stiffly ahead. “Monsters . . . soulless things . . . profane imitations of Man . . . manufactured objects!”

  “I know some of Them call us all those names—but not all of Them. Don’t you know there are others that take our part? I’ve read all the books I could find in the barracks library, about the—android question. It is a question for Them, you know. The reason we’re treated as we are—it’s simply because we’re a new creation; They don’t know yet what to do about us. I’ve read some of the speeches made in Their highest assemblies—pleading for us! Brave speeches . . .”

  “And you’re grateful to Them for a few brave words, and for letting you read books about your betters?” They were approaching the landing at the end of the catwalk. “Why do you want to get away from Them, then?”

  “I don’t.”

  Shocked, he halted and swung round, so abruptly that she bumped into the box he carried, and bit her lip with pain. “What’s that?”

  “I say I don’t want to get away.” Having caught his attention, she hurried on. “I want to go out and mix with Them, be like one of Them. That’s the way to hurry the time when we’ll be Their openly admitted equals. Not blowing up the Factory! You’ll only set us back by years. Our enemies will say, ‘See?’ Just as we said—they’re dangerous, Frankenstein monsters!”

  “Fine!” he said shortly. “Then maybe They’ll quit making monsters.”

  “You’ve been outside. Tell me, then—is it true? . . . that some of the escaped ones have had children—borne children?”

  He looked away. “That’s so. They’re fools. What’ll happen when they’re caught? Poor kids, finding out that Papa and Mama are really runaway Factory goods—”

  “Look at me!” she commanded in a low, fierce voice.

  HE LOOKED. Her eyes were dark and intense upon him in the light of the red witches’ den, light streaming up from beneath their feet . . . She was slight, fine-boned, but graciously formed. She was burningly alive, and beautiful.

  “I can have children. And children’s children, generations of descendants. Yours, maybe. We can go on, with or without the Factory. So in that way it doesn’t matter, now—certainly it’s not worth destroying ourselves to destroy it. Let’s get away while there’s still time . . .”

  He shut his eyes briefly. “Go on . . . in Their world?”

  Her shoulders sagged; she went on regarding him, but dully and without expression.

  He turned resolutely away, stepped onto the stage beneath the switchbox. He bent to set the second box down carefully beside the first; knelt over them, and with a screwdriver from his belt began ripping away the lightly stapled boards over the dynamite.

  He growled, “Leave me alone. I’ve got a job to do. Maybe it’s a dirty one, but—I’m an android. I was made to do dirty jobs.”

  The sticks of explosive were neatly packed in rows, detonator caps gleaming dully as he uncovered them. Fixing the primers in advance was a risk he’d felt he had to take, not knowing how much he might be hurried in the last minutes. He flung the boards aside, fumbled for the ends of wire, not looking at the girl again but knowing she still stood watching him.

  (The watchman babbled into the telephone. The man on the other end of the line said irritably, “What? What about the Factory? Speak up, will you . . . Huh? . . . Hold on. Hold everything! I’ll have help on. the way in a few minutes . . .”)

  She gazed speechlessly in the red gloom as he worked speedily but with care, whittling wire-ends bright with a pocket-knife, wiring the dynamite.

  “You seem to have thought of all the answers,” she said stifledly. “So no doubt you know this one . . . Why did They make us?”

  His hands froze momentarily with the blade and the wires. “All right; you’re going to tell me what you think you know. Go ahead.”

  “No. . . I don’t know. I doubt that They really know why, either. We haven’t profited Them—economically or any other way. We’ve been a costly experiment, and a lot of Them feel just like you do, would like to see it dropped and forgotten about. Their society’s been torn apart in disputes over us . . . But, if the books tell the truth, They worked and studied and tried for generations . . . and dreamed for more generations before that . . . to discover the secret of life. It looks as if there were something in Their makeup that compelled Them to do it, wouldn’t let Them rest until They’d created us.”

  HE GLANCED up at last, but she’d turned half away and was looking out over the glowing ranks of the breeders, the pregnant glass wombs redly throbbing with strange light and life. Her voice trailed into a silence underscored by the impalpable susurrus of the pumps.

  His fingers finished joining the wires that meant death, twisting them hard and viciously into sure contact. He said harshly, “I can tell you what that ‘something’ is, in Them. It’s the need.

  They have for somebody, anybody, to hate and scorn and despise—somebody to feel superior
to . . . They need that so badly, They’ll even make what They need.”

  She sighed, and said surprisingly, “I suppose you’re right; certainly Their histories tell a story . . . But there’s one thing I wonder if your theory explains; why did They make us in Their own image? The scientists, the ones that really created us—they swear, in their writings, in testimony before the legislators and so on, that there really isn’t any difference; we’re perfect likenesses of Them. As if They didn’t dare change anything . . .

  “Of course; that’s why you understand Their minds’ workings so well. Because we’re exactly like Them, the same feelings, the same thoughts—”

  “No!” he burst out. He rose erect, tangling the wires he’d been starting to unroll. “That’s a lie you got from Their books! We may be like Them in body—” He’d been shaken more than he dared admit by her words, the steady conviction that—be it ever so false—has the quality of sounding like the truth. Now fresh anger boiled up to strengthen him. He raged: “—But in mind, in feelings, there’s no common ground. That’s why we can’t ever be like Them, and They’ll never accept us; they don’t feel like we do! We’re made able to suffer, because They like to see suffering! We’re made so that we writhe under contempt, because They enjoy being contemptuous! They—They—”

  She listened and didn’t try to answer. He clenched his teeth, fought back the trembling of his fingers and struggled with the snarled loops of wire, already fastened at their farther end to the homemade exploder.

  But just as the wires came free, she spoke again. In a wholly altered voice—a sort of mournful chant, plainly the tone of one reciting a well-memorized text.

  “Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands . . .?”