by C. L. Moore
On the floor the fallen robots still twitched and stirred in response to the distant commands of their operators. But a heavy-duty robot, fallen, isn't easy to set upright again. Ego stooped over the nearest, seeming almost puzzled.
Then with sudden, rather horrifying violence, he reached out and ripped the front plate off his victim with one rending motion. His gaze plunged shining into the entrails of the thing, glancing in bright reflections off the tubes and the wiring so coarse in comparison with his own transistors and printed circuits. He put out one steel hand, sank his fingers deep and ripped again, gazing, engrossed, at the havoc he made. There was something frightful about this act of murder, one robot deliberately disemboweling another on his own initiative, with what seemed the coolest scientific interest.
But whatever Ego sought wasn't there. He straightened and went on to the next, ripped, stooped, studied the ticking and flashing entrails intently, his own inward ticking quite loud as if he were muttering to himself.
Conway, beckoning the supersonic squad on, thought to himself, "In the old days they used to tell fortunes that way. Maybe he's doing it now ..." And once more the chilly thought swam up to the surface of his consciousness that perhaps he knew what drove the robot to desperation. Perhaps he too knew the future, and the knowledge and the pressure made the two of them kin. Win the war was what Ego's ticking entrails commanded, just as the more complex neurons of Conway's brain commanded him. But what if winning was impossible, and Ego knew ...
The supersonic squad, running hard, burst out of the side corridor and pulled up short at their first sight of Ego in the—no, not flesh. In the shining steel, giant-tall, with the cyclops eye glaring. The sergeant panted something at Conway, trying to salute, forgetting that both his hands were full of equipment.
Conway with his pointing finger drew a semicircle in front of him before the calculator room door.
"Set the guns up, quick—along here. We've got to stop him if he tries to get in."
Ego straightened from his second victim and moved on to a third, hesitating over it, looking down.
The squad had, after all, only about thirty seconds to spare. They had been assembling their equipment as they ran, and now with speed as precise as machinery they took up positions along the line Conway had assigned them. He stood against the door, looking down at their stooping backs as they drew up the last line of defense with their own bodies and their guns between Ego and the calculators. Or no, Conway thought, maybe I'm the last line. For some remote and despairing thought was shaping itself in his mind as he looked at Ego ...
In exactly the same second that the first ultrasonic gun swung its snout toward the corridor, Ego straightened and faced the double doors and the circle of men kneeling behind their guns. It seemed to Conway that over their heads he and Ego looked at each other challengingly for a moment.
"Sergeant," Conway said in a tense voice. "Cut him off at the leg, halfway to the knee. And pinpoint it fine. He's full of precision stuff and he's worth a lot more than you or me.'
Ego bathed them in his cold headlight beam. Conway, wondering if the robot had understood, said quickly, "Fire."
You could hear the faintest possible hissing, nothing more. But a spot of heat glowed cherry-red and then blinding white upon Ego's left leg just below the knee.
Conway thought, "It's hopeless. If he charges us now he'll break through before we can—"
But Ego had another defense. The searchlight glance blinked once, and then Conway felt a sudden, violent discomfort he couldn't place, and the heat-spot went red again and faded. The sergeant dropped the gun nozzle and swore, shaking his hand.
"Fire on six," he said. "Eight, stand by."
Ego stood motionless, and the discomfort Conway felt deepened in rhythm with a subtle, visible vibration that pulsed through the steel tower before him.
A second sonic gun hissed faintly. A spot of red sprang out on the robot's leg. The vibration deepened, the discomfort grew worse. The heat-spot faded to nothing.
"Interference, sir," the sergeant said. "He's blanketing the sound-wave with a frequency of his own—something he's giving out himself. Feel it?"
"But why doesn't he charge?" Conway asked himself, not aloud, for fear the robot could really understand. And he thought, maybe he can't charge and broadcast the protecting frequency at the same time. Or maybe he hasn't thought yet that he could wade right through before we could hurt him much. And Conway tried to picture to himself the world as it must look to Ego, less than an hour old, with impossible conflicts raging in the electronic complexities of his chest.
Conway said, "The eight-gun's on another frequency? Keep trying, sergeant. Maybe he can't blanket them all at once. Hold out as long as you can."
He opened the door behind him quickly and softly and went into the computer room.
This was another world. For a moment he forgot everything that lay outside the double doors and stood there taking in the feel and smell and sight of the room. It was a good place. He had always liked to be here. He could forget what stood eight feet tall and poised for destruction outside the door, and what lay waiting in the future, no farther away than day after tomorrow. He looked up at the high, flat faces of the computers, liking the way the lights winked, the sound of tape feeding through drums, the steady, pouring sound of typewriter keys, the orderly, dedicated feel of the place.
Broome looked up from the group around the typewriter of the analogue computer. All the men in the room had left their jobs and were clustering here, where the broad tape flowed out from under the keys and the columns of print poured smoothly, like water, onto the paper.
"Anything?" Conway asked.
Broome straightened painfully, easing his back.
"I'm not sure."
"Tell me," Conway said. "Quick. He'll be here in seconds."
"He's set up a block, accidentally. That's pretty sure. But how and why we still don't—"
"Then you don't know anything," Conway said flatly. "Well, I think I may have a—"
On the other side of the door sudden tumult broke out. Steel feet thudded, men shouted, equipment crackled and spat. The shouting rose to a crescendo and fell silent. The double doors crashed open and Ego stood on the threshold, facing the calculators. Here and there on his steel body spots of dull heat were fading. He was smeared with stains of oil and blood, and his searchlight eye swept around the room with a controlled speed that yet had something frantic in it. Ego looked at the calculators and the calculators placidly ticked on, rolling out unheeded data under the jaws of their typewriters as every man in the room faced the robot.
In the open doorway behind Ego the squad sergeant stumbled into sight, blood across his face, the nozzle of a sonic-gun in his hand.
"No," Conway said. "Wait. Stand aside, Broome. Let Ego get to the calculators."
He paid no attention to the buzz of shocked response. He was looking at Ego with almost hypnotized attention, trying to force the cogs of his own thinking to mesh faster. There was still a chance. Just a shadow of a chance, he knew that. And if he let Ego at the calculators and Ego failed, he wasn't sure he could interfere in time to save anything. But he had to try. A line of dialogue out of something he couldn't identify floated through his mind. Yet I will try the last. Some other desperate commander in his last battle, indomitable in the face of defeat. Conway grinned a little, knowing himself anything but indomitable. And yet—I will try the last.
Ego still stood motionless in the doorway. Time moves so much slower than thought. The robot still scanned the computers and thought with complex tickings to himself. Conway stepped aside, leaving the way clear. As he moved he saw his own image swim up at him from the stained surfaces of the robot body, his own gaunt face and hollow eyes reflected as if from a moving mirror smeared with oil and blood, as if it were he himself who lived inside the robot's body, activating it with his own drives.
Ego's pause on the threshold lasted only a fraction of a second. His glance flick
ed the calculators and dismissed them one by one, infinitely fast. Then, as Broome had done, Ego wheeled to the analogue computer and crossed the floor in three enormous strides. Almost contemptuously, without even scanning it, he ripped out the programing tape. He slapped a blank tape into the punching device and his fingers flickered too fast to watch as he stamped his own questions into the wire. In seconds he was back at the computer.
Nobody moved. The mind was dazzled, trying to follow his speed. Only the computer seemed fast enough to keep pace with him, and he bent over the typewriter of the machine tautly, one machine communing with its kinsman, and the two of them so infinitely faster than flesh and blood that the men could only stand staring.
Nobody breathed. Conway—because thought is so fast—had time to say to himself with enormous hopefulness, "He'll find out the answer. He'll take over now. When the new assault starts he'll handle it and win, and I can stop trying any more ..."
The stream of printed answers began to pour out under the typewriter bar, and Ego bent to read. The bright cone of his sight bathed the paper. Then with a gesture that was savage as a man's, he ripped off the tape as if he were tearing out a tongue that had spoken intolerable words. And Conway knew the computer had failed them, Ego had failed, Conway had gambled and lost.
The robot straightened up and faced the machines. His steel hands shot out in a furious, punishing motion, ready to rip the computers apart as he had already ripped the other machines which had failed him.
Conway in a voice of infinite disillusion said, "Ego, wait. It's all right."
As always when you spoke its name, the robot paused and turned. And faster than data through the computers there poured through Conway's mind a torrent of linking thoughts. He saw his own image reflected upon the robot's body, himself imprisoned in the reflection as Ego was jailed in a task impossible to achieve.
He realized that he understood the robot as no one else alive could do, because only he knew the same tensions. It was something the computers couldn't deduce. But it was something Conway had partly guessed all along, and forbidden himself to recognize until the last alternative failed and he had to think for himself.
Win the war was the robot's basic drive. But he had to act on incomplete information, like Conway himself, and that meant that Ego had to assume responsibility for making wrong decisions that might lose the war, which he was not allowed to do. Neither could he shift responsibility as the computers could, saying, "No answer—insufficient data." Nor could he take refuge in neurosis or madness or surrender. Nor in passing the duty on to someone else, as Conway had tried to do. So all he could do was seek more knowledge furiously, almost at random, and all he could want was—
"I know what you want," Conway said. "You can have it. I'll take over, Ego. You can stop wanting, now."
"Want—" the robot howled inhumanly, and paused as usual, and then rushed on for the first time to finish his statement, "—to stop wanting!"
"Yes," Conway said. "I know. So do I. But now you can stop, Ego. Turn yourself off. You did your best."
The hollow voice said much more softly, "Want to stop ..." And then hovering on the brink of silence, "... stop want ..." It ceased. The shivering stopped. A feel of violence seemed to die upon the air around the robot, as if intolerable tensions had relaxed at last inside it. There was a series of clear, deliberate clickings from the steel chest, as of metallic decisions irrevocably reached, one after another. And then something seemed to go out of the thing. It stood differently. It was a machine again. Nothing more than a machine.
Conway looked at his own face in the motionless reflection. The robot couldn't take it, he thought. No wonder. He couldn't even speak to ask for relief, because the opposite of want is not want, and when he said the first word, its negative forced him to want nothing, and so to be silent. No, we asked too much. He couldn't take it. Meeting his own eyes in the reflection, he wondered if he was speaking to the Conway of a long minute ago. Perhaps he was. That Conway couldn't take it either. But this one had to, and could.
Ego couldn't act on partial knowledge. No machine could. You can't expect machines to face the unknown. Only human beings can do that. Steel isn't strong enough. Only flesh and blood can do it, and go on.
"Well, now I know," he thought. And it seemed strange, but he wasn't as tired as he had been before. Always until now there had been Ego to fall back on if he had to, but something he must not try until he reached the last gasp. Well, now he had reached it. And Ego couldn't carry the load.
He laughed gently to himself. The thought that had chilled him came back and he looked at it calmly. Maybe win the war was impossible. Maybe that paradox was what had stopped Ego. But Conway was human. It didn't stop him. He could accept the thought and push it aside, knowing that sometimes humans really do achieve the impossible. Maybe that was all that had kept them going this long.
Conway turned his head slowly and looked at Broome.
"Know what I'm going to do?" he asked.
Broome shook his head, the bright eyes watchful.
"I'm going to bed," Conway said. "I'm going to sleep. I know my limitations now. The other side's only flesh and blood too. They have the same problems we have. They have to sleep too. You can wake me up when the next attack starts. Then I'll handle it—or I won't. But I'll do my best and that's all anybody can do."
He moved stiffly past Ego toward the door, pausing for a moment to touch his palm against the motionless steel chest. It felt cold and not very steady against his hand.
"What do I mean, only flesh and blood?" he asked.
The End
TWO-HANDED ENGINE
Fantasy and Science Fiction - August 1955
with Henry Kuttner
Ever since the days of Orestes there have been men with Furies following them. It wasn't until the Twenty-Second Century that mankind made itself a set of real Furies, out of steel. Mankind had been through a lot by then. They had a good reason for building man-shaped Furies that would dog the footsteps of all men who kill men. Nobody else. There was by then no other crime of any importance.
It worked very simply. Without warning, a man who thought himself safe would suddenly hear the steady footfalls behind him. He would turn and see the two-handed engine walking toward him, shaped like a man of steel, and more incorruptible than any man not made of steel could be. Only then would the murderer know he had been tried and condemned by the omniscient electronic minds that knew society as no human mind could ever know it.
For the rest of his days, the man would hear those footsteps behind him. A moving jail with invisible bars that shut him off from the world. Never in life would he be alone again. And one day—he never knew when—the jailer would turn executioner.
-
Danner leaned back comfortably in his contoured restaurant chair and rolled expensive wine across his tongue, closing his eyes to enjoy the taste of it better. He felt perfectly safe. Oh, perfectly protected. For nearly an hour now he had been sitting here, ordering the most expensive food, enjoying the music breathing softly through the air, the murmurous, well-bred hush of his fellow diners. It was a good place to be. It was very good, having so much money—now.
True, he had had to kill to get the money. But no guilt troubled him. There is no guilt if you aren't found out, and Danner had protection. Protection straight from the source, which was something new in the world. Danner knew the consequences of killing. If Hartz hadn't satisfied him that he was perfectly safe, Danner would never have pulled the trigger ...
The memory of an archaic word flickered through his mind briefly. Sin. It evoked nothing. Once it had something to do with guilt, in an incomprehensible way. Not any more. Mankind had been through too much. Sin was meaningless now.
He dismissed the thought and tried the hearts-of-palm salad. He found he didn't like it. Oh well, you had to expect things like that. Nothing was perfect. He sipped the wine again, liking the way the glass seemed to vibrate like something faintly alive in h
is hand. It was good wine. He thought of ordering more, but then he thought no, save it, next time. There was so much before him, waiting to be enjoyed. Any risk was worth it. And of course, in this there had been no risk.
Danner was a man born at the wrong time. He was old enough to remember the last days of utopia, young enough to be trapped in the new scarcity economy the machines had clamped down on their makers. In his early youth he'd had access to free luxuries, like everybody else. He could remember the old days when he was an adolescent and the last of the Escape Machines were still operating, the glamorous, bright, impossible, vicarious visions that didn't really exist and never could have. But then the scarcity economy swallowed up pleasure. Now you got necessities but no more. Now you had to work. Danner hated every minute of it.
When the swift change came, he'd been too young and unskilled to compete in the scramble. The rich men today were the men who had built fortunes on cornering the few luxuries the machines still produced. All Danner had left were bright memories and a dull, resentful feeling of having been cheated. All he wanted were the bright days back, and he didn't care how he got them.
Well, now he had them. He touched the rim of the wineglass with his finger, feeling it sing silently against the touch. Blown glass? he wondered. He was too ignorant of luxury items to understand. But he'd learn. He had the rest of his life to learn in, and be happy.
He looked up across the restaurant and saw through the transparent dome of the roof the melting towers of the city. They made a stone forest as far as he could see. And this was only one city. When he was tired of it, there were more. Across the country, across the planet the network lay that linked city with city in a webwork like a vast, intricate, half-alive monster. Call it society.
He felt it tremble a little beneath him.
He reached for the wineglass and drank quickly. This faint uneasiness that seemed to shiver the foundations of the city was something new. It was because—yes, certainly it was because of a new fear.