by C. L. Moore
Quetzalcoatl rubbed the ring on his finger with an angry gesture.
"Because the world is going to stop fighting," he said ominously. "If it doesn't we will destroy it. There is no reason at all why men should not live together in peace and brotherhood."
"There is one reason, señor."
"What is that?"
"Fernández," Miguel said.
"I will destroy you both if you do not stop fighting."
"El señor is a great peacemaker," Miguel said courteously. "I will gladly stop fighting if you will tell me how to avoid being killed when I do."
"Fernández will stop fighting too."
Miguel removed his somewhat battered sombrero, reached for a stick, and carefully raised the hat above the rock. There was a nasty crack. The hat jumped away, and Miguel caught it as it fell.
"Very well," he said. "Since you insist, señor, I will stop fighting. But I will not come out from behind this rock. I am perfectly willing to stop fighting. But it seems to me that you demand I do something which you do not tell me how to do. You could as well require that I fly through the air like your machine of flight."
Quetzalcoatl frowned more deeply. Finally he said, "Miguel, tell me how this fight started."
"Fernández wishes to kill me and enslave my family."
"Why should he want to do that?"
"Because he is evil," Miguel said.
"How do you know he is evil?"
"Because," Miguel pointed out logically, "he wishes to kill me and enslave my family."
-
There was a pause. A road-runner darted past and paused to peck at the gleaming barrel of Miguel's rifle. Miguel sighed.
"There is a skin of good wine not twenty feet away—" he began, but Quetzalcoatl interrupted him.
"What was it you said about the water rights?"
"Oh, that," Miguel said. "This is a poor country, señor. Water is precious here. We have had a dry year and there is no longer water enough for two families. The water hole is mine. Fernández wishes to kill me and enslave—"
"Are there no courts of law in your country?"
"For such as us?" Miguel demanded, and smiled politely.
"Has Fernández a family too?" Quetzalcoatl asked.
"Yes, the poors," Miguel said. "He beats them when they do not work until they drop."
"Do you beat your family?"
"Only when they need it," Miguel said, surprised. "My wife is very fat and lazy. And my oldest, Chico, talks back. It is my duty to beat them when they need it, for their own good. It is also my duty to protect our water rights, since the evil Fernández is determined to kill me and—"
Quetzalcoatl said impatiently, "This is a waste of time. Let me consider." He rubbed the ring on his finger again. He looked around. The road-runner had found a more appetizing morsel than the rifle. He was now to be seen trotting away with the writhing tail of a lizard dangling from his beak.
Overhead the sun was hot in a clear blue sky. The dry air smelled of mesquite. Below, in the valley, the flying saucer's perfection of shape and texture looked incongruous and unreal.
"Wait here," Quetzalcoatl said at last. "I will talk to Fernández. When I call, come to my machine of flight. Fernández and I will meet you there presently."
"As you say, señor," Miguel agreed. His eyes strayed.
"And do not touch your rifle," Quetzalcoatl added with great firmness.
"Why, no, señor," Miguel said. He waited until the tall man had gone. Then he crawled cautiously across the dry ground until he had recaptured his rifle. After that, with a little searching, he found his machete. Only then did he turn to the skin of wine. He was very thirsty indeed. But he did not drink heavily. He put a full clip in the rifle, leaned against a rock, and sipped a little from time to time from the wineskin as he waited.
In the meantime the stranger, ignoring fresh bullets that occasionally splashed blue from his steely person, approached Fernández' hiding place. The sound of shots stopped. A long time passed, and finally the tall form reappeared and waved to Miguel.
"Yo voy, señor," Miguel shouted agreeably. He put his rifle conveniently on the rock and rose very cautiously, ready to duck at the first hostile move. There was no such move.
Fernández appeared beside the stranger. Immediately Miguel bent down, seized his rifle and lifted it for a snap shot.
Something thin and hissing burned across the valley. The rifle turned red-hot in Miguel's grasp. He squealed and dropped it, and the next moment his mind went perfectly blank.
"I die with honor," he thought, and then thought no more.
-
When he woke, he was standing under the shadow of the great flying saucer. Quetzalcoatl was lowering his hand from before Miguel's face. Sunlight sparkled on the tall man's ring. Miguel shook his head dizzily.
"I live?" he inquired.
But Quetzalcoatl paid no attention. He had turned to Fernández, who was standing beside him, and was making gestures before Fernández' masklike face. A light flashed from Quetzalcoatl's ring into Fernández' glassy eyes. Fernández shook his head and muttered thickly. Miguel looked for his rifle or machete, but they were gone. He slipped his hand into his shirt, but his good little knife had vanished too.
He met Fernández' eyes.
"We are both doomed, Don Fernández," he said. "This señor Quetzalcoatl will kill us both. In a way I am sorry that you will go to hell and I to heaven, for we shall not meet again."
"You are mistaken," Fernández replied, vainly searching for his own knife. "You will never see heaven. Nor is this tall norteamericano named Quetzalcoatl. For his own lying purposes he has assumed the name of Cortés."
"You will tell lies to the devil himself," Miguel said.
"Be quiet, both of you," Quetzalcoatl (or Cortés) said sharply. "You have seen a little of my power. Now listen to me. My race has assumed the high duty of seeing that the entire solar system lives in peace. We are a very advanced race, with power such as you do not yet dream of. We have solved problems which your people have no answer for, and it is now our duty to apply our power for the good of all. If you wish to keep on living, you will stop fighting immediately and forever, and from now on live in peace and brotherhood. Do you understand me?"
"That is all I have ever wished," Fernández said, shocked. "But this offspring of a goat wishes to kill me."
-
"There will be no more killing," Quetzalcoatl said. "You will live in brotherhood, or you will die."
Miguel and Fernández looked at each other and then at Quetzalcoatl.
"The señor is a great peacemaker," Miguel murmured. "I have said it before. The way you mention is surely the best way of all to insure peace. But to us it is not so simple. To live in peace is good. Very well, señor. Tell us how."
"Simply stop fighting."
"Now that is easy to say," Fernández pointed out. "But life here in Sonora is not a simple business. Perhaps it is where you come from—"
"Naturally," Miguel put in.
"—but it is not simple with us. Perhaps in your country, señor, the snake does not eat the rat, and the bird eat the snake. Perhaps in your country there is food and water for all, and a man need not fight to keep his family alive. Here it is not so simple."
Miguel nodded. "We shall certainly all be brothers some day," he agreed.
"You must not use force to solve your problems," Quetzalcoatl said with great firmness. "Force is evil. You will make peace now."
"Or else you will destroy us," Miguel said. He shrugged again and met Fernández' eyes. "Very well, señor. You have an argument I do not care to resist. Al fin, I agree. What must we do?"
Quetzalcoatl turned to Fernández.
"I too, señor," the latter said, with a sigh. "You are, no doubt, right. Let us have peace."
"You will take hands," Quetzalcoatl said, his eyes gleaming. "You will swear brotherhood."
Miguel held out his hand. Fernández took it firmly and the two men grinned at each other.
"You see?" Quetzalcoatl said, giving them his austere smile. "It is not hard at all. Now you are friends. Stay friends."
He turned away and walked toward the flying saucer. A door opened smoothly in the sleek hull. On the threshold Quetzalcoatl turned. "Remember," he said. "I shall be watching."
"Without a doubt," Fernández said. "Adiós, señor."
"Vaya con Dios," Miguel added.
The smooth surface of the hull closed after Quetzalcoatl. A moment later the flying saucer lifted smoothly and rose until it was a hundred feet above the ground. Then it shot off to the north like a sudden flash of lightning and was gone.
"As I thought," Miguel said. "He was from los estados unidos."
Fernández shrugged. "There was a moment when I thought he might tell us something sensible," he said. "No doubt he had great wisdom. Truly, life is not easy."
"Oh, it is easy enough for him," Miguel said. "But he does not live in Sonora. We, however, do. Fortunately, I and my family have a water hole to rely on. For those without one, life is hard."
"It is a very poor water hole," Fernández said. "Such as it is, however, it is mine." He was rolling a cigarette as he spoke. He handed it to Miguel and rolled another for himself. The two men smoked for a while in silence. Then, still silent, they parted.
Miguel went back to the wineskin on the hill. He took a long drink, grunted with pleasure, and looked around him. His knife, machete and rifle were carelessly flung down not far away. He recovered them and made sure he had a full clip.
Then he peered cautiously around the rock barricade. A bullet splashed on the stone near his face. He returned the shot.
-
After that, there was silence for a while. Miguel sat back and took another drink. His eye was caught by a road-runner scuttling past, with the tail of a lizard dangling from his beak. It was probably the same road-runner as before, and perhaps the same lizard, slowly progressing toward digestion.
Miguel called softly, "Señor Bird! It is wrong to eat lizards."
The road-runner cocked a beady eye at him and ran on.
Miguel raised and aimed his rifle. "Stop eating lizards, Señor Bird. Stop, or I must kill you."
The road-runner ran on across the rifle sights.
"Don't you understand how to stop?" Miguel called gently. "Must I explain how?"
The road-runner paused. The tail of the lizard disappeared completely.
"Oh, very well," Miguel said. "When I find out how a road-runner can stop eating lizards and still live, then I will tell you, amigo. But until then, go with God."
He turned and aimed the rifle across the valley again.
The End
HOME THERE'S NO RETURNING
(1955)
with Henry Kuttner
The General opened the door and came softly into the big, bright underground room. There by the wall under the winking control panels lay the insulated box, nine feet long, four feet wide, just as it always lay, just as he always saw it—day or night, waking or sleeping, eyes open or closed. The box shaped like a tomb. But out of it, if they were lucky, something would be born.
The General was tall and gaunt. He had stopped looking at himself in the mirror because his own face had begun to frighten him with its exhaustion, and he hated to meet the look of his own sunken eyes. He stood there feeling the beat of unseen machinery throb through the rock all around him. His nerves secretly changed each rhythmic pulse into some vast explosion, some new missile against which all defenses would be useless.
He called sharply in the empty laboratory, "Broome!" No answer. The General walked forward and stood above the box. Over it on the control panel lights winked softly on and off, and now and then a needle quivered. Suddenly the General folded up his fist and smashed the knuckles down hard on the reverberant metal of the box. A sound like hollow thunder boomed out of it.
"Easy, easy," somebody said. Abraham Broome was standing in the doorway, a very old man, small and wrinkled, with bright, doubtful eyes. He shuffled hastily to the box and laid a soothing hand on it, as if the box might be sentient for all he knew.
"Where the hell were you?" the General asked.
Broome said, "Resting. Letting some ideas incubate. Why?"
"You were resting?" The General sounded like a man who had never heard the word before. Even to himself he sounded strange. He pressed his eyelids with finger and thumb, because the room seemed to be dwindling all around him, and the face of Broome receded thinly into gray distances. But even with shut eyes he could still see the box and the sleeping steel giant inside, waiting patiently to be born. Without opening his eyes, he said, "Wake it up, Broome."
Broome's voice cracked a little. "But I haven't fin—"
"Wake it up."
"Something's gone wrong, General?"
General Conway pressed his eyelids until the darkness inside reddened—as all this darkness underground would redden when the last explosions came. Perhaps tomorrow. Not later than the day after. He was almost sure of that. He opened his eyes quickly. Broome was looking at him with a bright, dubious gaze, his lids sagging at the outer corners with the weight of unregarded years.
"I can't wait any longer," Conway said carefully. "None of us can wait. This war is too much for human beings to handle any more." He paused and let the rest of his breath go out in a sigh, not caring—perhaps not daring—to say the thing aloud that kept reverberating in his head like steadily approaching thunder. Tomorrow, or the day after—that was the deadline. The enemy was going to launch an all-out attack on the Pacific Front Sector within the next forty-eight hours.
The computers said so. The computers had ingested every available factor from the state of the weather to the conditions of the opposing general's childhood years, and this was what they said. They could be wrong. Now and then they were wrong, when the data they received was incomplete. But you couldn't go on the assumption that they would be. You had to assume an attack would come before day after tomorrow.
General Conway had not—he thought—slept since the last attack a week ago, and that was a minor thing compared to what the computers predicted now. He was amazed in a remote, unwondering way, that the general who preceded him had lasted so long. He felt a sort of gray malice toward the man who would come after him. But there wasn't much satisfaction in that thought, either. His next in command was an incompetent fool. Conway had taken up responsibility a long time ago, and he could no more lay it down now than he would detach his painfully swimming head for a while and set it gently aside on some quiet shelf to rest. No, he would have to carry his head on his shoulders and his responsibilities on his back until—
"Either the robot can take over the job or it can't," he said. "But we can't wait any longer to find out."
He stooped suddenly and with a single powerful heave tore the box-lid open and sent it crashing back. Broome stepped up beside him and the two of them looked down on the thing that lay placidly inside, face up, passionless, its single eye unlit and as blank as Adam's before he tasted the fruit. The front panel of its chest was open upon a maze of transistors, infinitely miniature components, thin silver lines of printed circuits. A maze of fine wiring nested around the robot, but most of it was disconnected by now. The robot was almost ready to be born.
"What are we waiting for?" Conway demanded harshly. "I said wake it up!"
"Not yet, General. It isn't safe—yet. I can't predict what might happen—"
"Won't it work?"
Broome looked down at the steel mask winking with reflected lights from the panel boards above it. His face wrinkled up with hesitation. He bent to touch one finger to a wire that led into the massive opened chest at a circuit labeled "In-Put."
"It's programmed," he said very doubtfully. "And yet—"
"Then it's ready," Conway's voice was flat. "You heard me, Broome. I can't wait any longer. Wake it up."
"I'm afraid to wake it up," Broome said ...
The General's ears played a familiar
trick on him. I'm afraid—I'm afraid ... He couldn't make the voice stop echoing. But fear is what all flesh is heir to, he thought. Flesh knows its limitations. It was time for steel to take over.
Pushbutton warfare used to look like the easy way to fight. Now man knows better. Man knows what the weakest link is—himself. Flesh and blood. Man has the hardest job of all, the job of making decisions on incomplete data. Until now, no machine could do that. The computers were the very heartbeat and brain-pulse of pushbutton war, but they were limited thinkers. And they could shrug off responsibility with an easy, "No answer—insufficient data." After which it was up to man to give them what more they needed. The right information, the right questions, the right commands. No wonder the turnover in generals was so high.
So the Electronic Guidance Operator was conceived. The General looked down at it, lying quietly waiting for birth. Ego was its name. And it would have free will, after a fashion. The real complexity of the fabulous computers lies not in the machines themselves, but in the programing fed into them. The memory banks are no good at all without instructions about how to use the data. And instructions are extremely complex to work out.
That was going to be Ego's job from now on. Ego had been designed to act like the human brain, on only partial knowledge, as no machine before had ever done. Flesh and blood had reached their limits, Conway thought. Now was the hour for steel to take over. So Ego lay ready to taste the first bite of the apple Adam bit. Tireless like steel, resourceful like flesh, munching the apple mankind was so tired of munching ...
"What do you mean, afraid?" Conway asked.
"It's got free will," Broome said. "Don't you see? I can't set up free will and controls. I can only give it one basic order—win the war. But I can't tell it how. I don't know how? I can't even tell it what not to do. Ego will simply wake like—well, like a man educated and matured in his sleep, waking for the first time. It will feel needs, and act on its wants. I can't control it. And that scares me, General."
Conway stood still, blinking, feeling exhaustion vibrate shrilly in his nerve ends. He sighed and touched the switch on his lapel microphone. "Conway here. Send Colonel Garden to Operation Christmas. And a couple of MPs."