Tyrrel’s shadow fell into the house through the open doorway. “I think you’d better stay out here,” he told the robot through his gathering numbness.
“He won’t mind if I come in,” the robot said firmly.
Tyrrel was too taken up to argue. He simply crossed the room with gentle footsteps, half-hearing the robot’s equally gentle tread behind him. He reached Lorri’s side.
The old man twisted his head, his eyes turning up toward the two; the robot quietly stepped back out of his line of vision.
“Tyrrel,” the old man said. His voice blew out of his mouth like a shutter tom loose in a high wind. “Intelligent life does not retrogress. Remember. Retro—retrogression is a sign of failing intelligence. The village must rise. Heritage. My heritage. Took—took them out of the jungle. Came out of jungle when I dragged them—but they brought jungle with them. Led them out of it. Took a group of fish—fishermen. Made human beings out of diem. I was only one saw—saw the way. Saw future—I saw the future, Tyrrel! In my mind—no mind ev* like it before. Saw how civi—civilization has to work. Interdependence. Figured out concept of interdependence. Broad front of progress. Only a thousan’ of ’em. Whole planet to draw resources from. Not hard—small group. All believed in me. Followed advice. Good at that. Not resistant to information. Give ’em outline, they’ll work, fill in details. But got to give outline. No curiosity. Won’t look for things—but show ’em, and they’ll carry on, long as you keep pushing.”
The old man suddenly twisted, interrupting the flow of babbling that Tyrrel only half understood. One hand reached up and closed on Tyrrel’s wrist.
“You’re nex* Gansha. Been building you up. Not smart—not like me. Too much influence from mother—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes opening wide, as though he had let something slip. Then he twisted his mouth in a travesty of an ironic grin. “Won’ understand anyway, will you? Words of all-wise Gansha sometimes incomprehensible, eh? Maybe you’re mother’s husban’s son, ’nyway. But training—training counts, too.
“Keep pushing them, Tyrrel. Gave you broad outline, how things have to go. Pass on to others. Don’ let it end, Ty. Have to civilize. Dirty, stinkin’ fishing village. Hated it. Built it up. Gonna go farther. They’ll forget village, build up into big culture, remember me. Always remember Gansha Lorn. Forget kid was too good to gut fish.” The Gansha’s hand clenched convulsively on Tyrrel’s wrist. “Retrogression is a sign of failing intelligence,” he said with sudden clarity. “I never let them know how sick I was. Don’t let anybody in here; I don’t want them to see me. Tell them when I die; tell them 1 died in my sleep. Stay here. Don’t let anybody in, understand?”
The staring whites of Lorri’s eyes dug at Tyrrel’s face. Tyrrel almost mentioned the presence of the robot, but the old man went on, cutting him off before he could do more than part his lips.
“Understand me, boy?” he said sharply. “Don’t let them come in and see me!”
Tyrrel nodded, and the old man grinned. He half-raised his hand, then let it slide from Tyrrel’s wrist to fall to the floor beside him. He thrashed his body over on its back. His eyes dropped shut, and his limbs shook in spasmodic contractions at the pain that was tearing through him; but he moved them slowly until they fell into a rough approximation of a relaxed, peaceful attitude.
He lay on his back, his wracked face upward, his arms and legs jerking, but he had determined to die as though in peace. His breathing became convulsive, but did not stop as yet.
Tyrrel squatted down beside him, facing the door, his eyes clouded. He felt the numbness that had been encircling his mind steadily, that was now closing into a clenched fist of grief and loss. Through the numbness came a realization of how great a man Kes Lord had been. How his thoughts and energies had always been directed toward the progress of his people, until, even now, delirious and half-babbling with pain, he had nevertheless gathered his last dregs of determination and passed the torch on to his hand-picked successor.
And then the fist closed around that thought, and around the pain and desolation. It left him squatting beside the Gansha, filling his mind while the old man slowly died.
V
The robot looked at the two humans from his shadowed comer. The answer to the riddle of the village had finally come.
He’d been given false data—or, perhaps, rephrase to “insufficient data.” The village civilization was not spontaneous, the product of steady evolution; rather, it had risen artificially on the momentum of one man’s ambition. A paranoid, but a genius. Perhaps the qualities were interrelated; the robot had never completed his data files on psychology.
The robot, of course, was incapable of the physiological expressions of irony. He could, however, chuckle in his mind. So the old bachelor had tried to keep the genius strain alive, eh? Well, he had failed here, but it might turn up again…if Tyrrel had a child, say. And if one man had it, might there not be others?
The robot did not, as yet, know what he was going to do about that.
Tyrrel was a problem. The old man had woven well, but die son was never going to be able to hold the complex program together.
What to do? The robot integrated his data, and arrived at the obvious solution—a solution so good that it fitted in perfectly with the robot’s own motives; now he knew what his next course of action must be.
He had arrived at his conclusion with no time to spare. The Gansha’s breath whistled out between his teeth. The shaken body slumped into relaxation. The old man’s last wish had been granted.
The robot padded gently past Tyrrel and closed the staring eyes. He raised the dropped jaw, and turned the head so that it would not fall again.
“His pain has stopped,” the robot said.
Tyrrel raised his eyes and saw the robot looking at him across Kes Lorri’s body. “You will be voted the next Gansha,” the robot said.
Tyrrel nodded woodenly. The functioning of his mind was hampered by the stricture of grief, yet, the very fact that they had stood this death-watch together, or else some other mysterious kinship, was enough to make less of an alien and more of a fellow out of die robot.
“Do you think you’re too young?” the robot asked.
Tyrrel felt his eyes widen with surprise. “I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s hard to judge your own experience; I’m still not used to the thought that a judgment is necessary.”
The robot nodded, and Tyrrel startled himself even more by realizing that it was a nod of agreement.
“I know,” the robot said.
He knew? How could he know? But, somehow, Tyrrel felt that he did. Almost as though the robot were partially filling the emptiness that Lorri’s death had left, he could feel the numbness begin to drain from his mind, leaving the sorrow but taking away the paralyzing grief.
“I’ll have to let the villagers know,” he said. He stood up and began to walk out of the house.
“What about the body?” the robot asked.
“He had no family,” Tyrrel answered. “I’ll bum the house tonight.”
The typical barbarian funeral, the robot thought. I*11 change that in you yett Gansha Cye.
VI
Tyrrel looked down from his doorway at the gathered villagers. Every face reflected the same numbed irresolution he himself now felt to a lesser degree.
“We’ll have to hold an election as soon as possible,” he said heavily.
One of the men in the crowd raised his head. “If it’s all right, I don’t see any need for one. We all know the Gansha wanted you to follow him; we’ve all learned that the Gansha always worked and planned for the good of all of us. So I don’t see why we shouldn’t just call you—”—the man’s unaccustomed tongue stumbled over the words—“Gansha Cye.”
The rest of the crowd murmured in affirmation.
Tyrrel felt his eyes welling over; his throat filled with a warm lump that he swallowed jerkily. “Thank you,” he said haltingly, and then, at the comprehension of his inheritance, he turned qu
ickly and got inside the house, his steps uneven.
The robot was waiting for him. “I heard them,” he said, his calm voice bringing a measure of relaxation to Tyrrel’s overstrained nerves. “It’s a big responsibility, isn’t it?”
Tyrrel nodded silently.
“It’s not as big as it seems right now,” the robot said gently. “Kes Lorn left the program mapped out behind him; he was a wise man. If you follow his plan, you and your people will rise to the heights he dreamed of.”
“You’ll help me, won’t you?” Tyrrel suddenly found himself saying, and immediately knowing that it was what he had been wanting to say since Lorri’s death.
The robot nodded. “I’ll be glad to tell you about the various fields of scientific investigation. My data-banks, of course, contain the sum total of all the universal natural laws which have been discovered on Earth, and I’ll be glad to supply you with those.
“I understand, quite well, that every culture must do things its own way—that every type of intelligence has its own motivations, and their concommitant expressions.
But Lorn has already laid down the plan of your progress, so that there is no danger of contamination.
“You see what we can do? We can short-cut all along the line, for technological evolution is only a process, not a necessity. Why bother with coal, when you’re free to begin with atomics, a point which took the Earthmen centuries to reach? But I won’t tell you how to build atomic reactors—I’ll simply supply you with the working principles, and you can develop your own, applying them where they best seem required for your culture.
“I won’t tell you how to build a spaceship, but I’ll give you the laws of nuclear physics and astronautics—how you make use of them is something that will have to spring from your own cultural background.”
“You know,” Tyrrel said, “that’s almost what Lorri told me, the first night you came here.”
“Is it?” The robot paused for a moment, and then went on. “You see? It’s what Lorri planned. Once you have industry, of course, the village will grow into a city. It will stay that way for a while, and then, as your population rises, your people will scatter out over the world, until, actually, you have a decentralized culture, with the city remaining as the central point from which the power and commodities flow. By then, you’ll have a communications net all ready to handle the job.
“After that, furthur expansion, into the stars.”
Into the stars, Tyrrel thought. On common ground with the Earthmen, and a civilization too well established to be warped or contaminated. In fact, the shoe would be on the other foot. It would be the Earthmen who would have to be wary.
As the robot talked, unfolding his plan—so parallel to Lorri’s own—all the obstacles which Tyrrel had envisioned began to fall away, one by one. He caught the robot’s enthusiasm, the sense of inevitable wheels turning, of an almost-automatic forge glowing white-hot and stamping out the shape of destiny, as facet after facet of the plan was fulfilled and formed the structure and supports on which new facets came into actuality. Interdependence, he remembered Lorn’s words; a broad front of progress.
He could never have done it by himself, he knew. Not so rapidly as he could with the robot to eliminate false starts and fruitless attempts, at any rate.
“Thank you,” he said, trying to project the sincerity of his feelings into his voice.
“There’s nothing to thank me for, Tyrrel,” the robot answered quietly. “I am a service mechanism; this is my function.”
Perhaps because of this reminder, the contrast between the robot’s warm, human voice and his inanimate outer shell was suddenly emphasized in Tyrrel’s awareness. And there was something about that voice…
Tyrrel wondered if that had been responsible for his feeling of kinship with this essentially alien being. Ever since Lorri’s death, Tyrrel abruptly remembered, the robot’s voice had been subtly changing. Now, it was very close to the remembered tones of the old Gansha’s voice.
It was a disquieting realization. And yet, despite, or perhaps—he admitted—because of it, he realized equally well that he needed the robot’s guidance as much as he had needed Lorri’s.
It was not a flattering admission. But it was one he had to accept.
MIDDLE:
The robot stood on the hill overlooking the village, which had spread upriver and fanned out along the delta. The population-growth of the past twenty-five years had not been enough to warrant such expansion, even adding the men in the various mining and agricultural colonies; but most of the area adjacent to the extensive docks was now taken up by warehouses, and the buildings on the outskirts, of course, housed the many collation centers where the raw materials of knowledge he supplied were compiled, and practical applications postulated. There was, of course, no need of actual research-laboratories, or of factories. With a total population of twelve hundred, anything like a production line was ridiculous. All that was required were working models of various devices, some of which were scaled up into actual machinery on a hand-tooled basis, others simply stored against the day they were needed.
Withal, the current technological trend did not resemble Earth’s except in its basic outlines. Agricultural decentralization had already been followed by urban concentration, and now the village—really a scale-model city—was equipped with all the requirements of industry, together with a communications and supply network that unified it with its colonies. The village was pregnant with civilization, and at this moment—only twenty-five years since Lorn’s death and the robot’s arrival—it was ready to give birth.
And this next step, the robot thought, would also be basically parallel to a similar process on Earth—but it would not come in the Terrestrial manner. No, certainly not in the Terrestrial manner.
He was more and more conscious of the tremendous advantage that Lorri’s plan had given his own purposes. He shook his head in admiration at the misanthropic old genius; if Lorri had lived…
Well, he hadn’t; that was data. And Tyrrel could never have carried out Lorri’s legacy to the village.
Odd, how the purposes of metal had intersected the purposes of flesh so squarely that, to the unwary eye, they seemed to have fused.
No, the robot thought, Tyrrel’s position had not changed from what it had always been—he was still simply the hands that implemented the village’s brain.
I took Lorri’s legacy with his voice, the robot thought.
Gansha Robot, he thought further. And then: How much vanity did the Earthmen build into me?
II
Tyrrel hurried out of the test building on the newly-completed aerodynamics research field. A rotating airfoil, rising and falling with its dummy body in a vertical wind tunnel, had fascinated and delayed him until there was barely time, if he drove rapidly, to meet the robot for their regular conference.
“Gansha Cye.” The girl’s voice was low, but not subdued. It was low, Tyrrel decided, because it did not have to be raised to attract attention.
“Yes?” He turned and looked at her. She was about twenty-six, he decided—half his age.
“I am Lara Sem.”
Sem? Odd, he thought. Sem’s wife must have been barely pregnant when Lorri died; now Sem was dead in a blast-furnace blowback, and Tyrrel was alive and speaking to Sem’s child, who was a full-grown woman.
She had short, soft brown hair. He liked the color.
“I knew your father,” he said.
She nodded briefly, and obviously dismissed it as having no bearing on the present—which was true enough, but still…“Are you driving back to the village?” she asked.
She puzzled him; she was direct, incisive, without the wishy-washy mannerisms of the village women he had met up to now. He was having difficulty in meeting her eyes—which were green—and they reminded him strongly of Lorn’s, for some reason.
He decided he liked her. It was not necessary to understand someone to like them, was it? He had liked Lorri; he liked the robot.
“Yes, yes, I am,” he answered, unaccountably confused.
“May I go with you, then?”
It was an unusual request. On the other hand, what was wrong with it? He had a car, and was going to the village; she was going the same way. Well, then?
“Certainly,” he said.
“Thank you.” She acknowledged the arrangement with a nod of her head.
Driving back with her, seated beside her on the narrow cushion stretched across the framework which held the engine, Tyrrel discovered that he could spare some attention from the road and devote it to answers for her occasional and apparently aimless questions, which were delivered sharply, as though she had a right to the answers. Which, he supposed, she certainly had.
“How soon do you think we’ll be on an equal footing with the Earthmen, Gansha Cye?”
He considered the problem, and answered her as best he could. “Gansha Lorri told us what our attitude toward that question should be,” he reminded her. “Special circumstances may someday put us in conflict with the Earthmen—but the possibility of that conflict cannot be the guiding factor in our progress. We must take our own course at our own speed.” For some reason, he didn’t seem to have answered her question adequately, but she made no direct comment on that.
“Ah, yes, Gansha Lorri,” she said instead. “Has anyone told you you resemble his pictures?”
Resemble Lorri? He was flattered that she had noticed, for it was something that had occured to him once or twice. Particularly since he’d reached an age when it was beginning to be possible to compare his appearance with the remembered image of the old man. But no one except the girl had ever mentioned it. She was very acute.
“Well, then,” she asked now, “how soon do you think we will reach the stage of interstellar travel?”
Rare Science Fiction Page 5