“No, Sir,” the Port Director answered honestly.
“I didn’t think so! And they’ve no right to expect anything else of us. It’s not your concern, nor mine, if Lorri tried to push them up the evolutionary scale much too early.
“Did you think I hadn’t figured that out? I’m a servo-mechanical engineer, remember? And the best—the very best—this planet has. You don’t think that was an accident, do you? Robot built a tool that could make a stupid operator look good—how much brains does it take to mumble words into an autocom?—but now it’s time an operator came along that could make even that tool strain its bearings, trying to keep up. And you’ll keep straining, too, until we come up with a technology the likes of which this universe has never seen! And you’ll love doing it, won’t you?”
“Yes, Sir,” the Port Director answered.
Domi’s knuckles rapped on the robot’s torso. “You’re zero deviation, you will! Efficiency? Friend, if efficiency were oil, you’d founder! We’re going to build the cracking-est and shiniest technology I can dream up—and after I quit, there’ll be somebody around to take my place! Remember that. There’ll always be me, and those like me, up at the top. You robots come in the middle, above your robots—those so-called human beings that came out of a grass-mat village a hundred years ago. We’re going to carry them on our backs and fling them up at the stars. They won’t care, one way or the other; maybe, if some of them live through their first few meetings with the races that must live out there, they might actually evolve into something. The blood for it is there, buried somewhere under all that bone in their heads. Lorri and my mother were proof enough of that.
“And why will we do it? Because we love them? Did Lorri love them? Did Robot love them? Do you? Do I?”
The intonation of his voice was so beclouded by the huskiness of his voice that the Port Director couldn’t have been sure whether the question was rhetorical or not. In any case, he said, “No, Sir.”
“On the green!” Dorai laughed again and waved his hand over the port tarmac. “In about two months, you’re going to see a gravitomech ship lifting off that, PS-1. That’s a little project not even Robot found out about, he was so busy heating his circuits over some very pretty fission drives I cooked up for him. Fission! By the time that scow of the Earthmen’s limps home, we’ll have been there and gone five years ago; and what they’ll find will make them wish they’d jumped off the stage right here! They’re not going to find two stones standing together, when I and the servos get through with their civilization.
I’m sure not going to take the chance of having another race messing up my plans.”
His voice softened as his glance touched Tyrrel’s body. “Take care of that, will you?” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” the Port Director said, and picked up the late Gansha gently. He carried the body to the elevator and took it down to ground level, for it is the destiny of metal to fulfill the destiny of flesh.
Dorni stood looking over the city. His father and the Robot had liked to stand on that hill on the other side of the city, he remembered. He stamped his foot on the lithoplastic. This was a better kind of hill, by Constants! Man-made, even if servostructors had actually put it up for what did it matter what kind of tool a man used?
He looked out at the harbor. There ought to be something out in the middle of that—a central point of some kind, to fill out the sweep of those breakwaters. Perhaps, in time, a figure of himself. Big enough to see. Twenty times life-size ought to do it.
He devoted one more thought to the Earthmen, and laughed at the imagined looks on their faces when they saw what kind of a world he’d left for them to come home to. Interstellar empire, eh? He’d lived his youth under the shadowy fear of what will happen when the Earthmen come back. That, and Robot, and actually daring to plan on a world where men had wound up doing things at the suggestion of machines. Well, he had the robots cowed, and he had the ignorant villagers under his thumb—where they belonged for being too stupid to recognize their destiny—and now he was going to get back at the Earthmen. He’d show them an empire.
Maybe the Earthmen were lucky enough to have a few Earthwomen crewing their ship with them. It seemed reasonable, short-handed after a war. I hope so, he chuckled in his mind—for the sake of any little Earthmen they care to have.
He wondered, briefly, about the Robot; maybe he should intercept that ship and make it a clean sweep.
He shrugged. He hadn’t investigated, but intercepting a ship in hyperspace was probably impossible. Besides, suppose the Robot did get back to Earth? With what there’d be left, what could one robot do?
PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE
by Charles V. De Vet
Ted Srock had his first drink of the evening as Havilland’s second sun went below the horizon.
He glanced idly at the girl who shouldered her way into the open space next to him at the bar, and noted with surprise that she was fighting to hold back panic. She stood for a moment gripping the polished edge of the bar so hard that her fingers showed white.
She was slender, Srock observed, and vital, with a ripely curved body and delightfully ample bosom. The olive-hued flesh of her face must normally have been soft and feminine, but now the tenseness of the muscles had drawn the skin tight across her cheekbones.
Suddenly she gave a faint gasp and Srock followed her glance into the mirror behind the bar. She was looking, he saw, at two guardsmen coming in through the door. For an instant fear rode high on her features.
She turned and met Srock’s inquiring gaze. She surveyed him hastily, taking in his muscular frame and darkly handsome features, and the roll-collar emblem of his Brotherhood in one brief appraisal. Resolutely she banished the signs of fear from her face and smiled.
“Smile back at me,” she whispered urgently, “and laugh—as though “I’d just told you something amusing.”
With one part of his mind wondering at his ready acquiescence Srock found himself doing as she asked.
She leaned toward him and rested her forehead against his shoulder. She appeared to be laughing, but her voice came up to him laden with anxiety. “Take me outside, and keep talking while we walk; pretend we’re a little drunk.”
Srock took her arm and led her toward the door. As they passed the guardsmen he bent close to her ear and whispered, “Steady.”
She looked up at him and laughed gayly. Only the strained whiteness at the comers of her mouth showed the effort it cost her.
Once outside the girl held tight to his coat sleeve. “Stay with me awhile longer,” she begged; “please.”
Srock nodded. “Don’t appear in too great a hurry,” he cautioned as they walked.
Fifty feet from the bar entrance the girl turned and threw a glance over her shoulder. Srock felt her stiffen. “We didn’t fool them,” she breathed; “they’re about ten paces behind. What can we do?”
“Turn left at the next comer,” Srock answered. His course of action was formed as he spoke. He knew he was planning a dangerous thing: Assaulting Cartee’s guardsmen was a crime punishable by death. But, as a member of the Brotherhood, faithful to its vows, Srock saw no alternative. Furthermore, he found himself oddly anxious to help this unusually-met girl.
As they turned the comer Srock pushed her ahead and flattened himself against the building’s near wall. He waited, with the personal satisfaction of knowing that he was at least as well conditioned as his pursuers for violent physical action. One of the axioms of the Brotherhood was that its members must be fit—and ready for any possible contingency.
The first unsuspecting guardsman rounded the comer and the heel of Srock’s right hand landed heavily just below his left ear.
Srock caught the short, heavy body as it went limp and spun it against the second guardsman, knocking his hand from his half drawn gun. Before he could recover Srock drove forward. His shoulder caught the guardsman in the diaphragm, lifting him off his feet and battering him against tiie building at his back. The starc
h went out of the guardsman and he sagged slowly down along the wall.
In the back of his mind Srock had expected the girl to be gone when it was over, but now he found her still waiting. Neither of them said a word as they walked rapidly away. It was the girl who hailed a licensed carrier a block farther on.
Once in the cab she gave the driver an address, then relaxed and looked at Srock. “You’re quite a man,” she said.
Srock shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.
“I see by your collar that you’re a Brother,” she observed. “Isn’t this sort of thing a bit out of your line?”
“Not too much,” Srock answered. “We try to help—in whatever way seems necessary.”
“Aren’t you afraid of trouble with the guardsmen?”
“As afraid as the next man, I suppose.”
“I’ve got to have a cigaret,” the girl said. She drew a partly filled package from a pocket on her sleeve. Taking out a slim, white oval she placed it between her red lips, lit it, breathed in deeply, and blew smoke at the cab ceiling. She reached toward Srock with the package. “Have one?” she asked.
Srock shook his head. “No, thanks. I prefer these.” He pulled a five-sided cigar from his breast pocket and bit off the tip with square white teeth. The girl held her lighter to the cigar end until it glowed redly.
“Now,” Srock said, leaning back. “What’s this all about?”
The girl reflected for a moment before answering. “My name is Jessica,” she said. “Jessica Manthe. Other than that all I can tell you is that I’ve done nothing illegal. The guardsmen want me for questioning. If they take me they’ll make me talk. And if I talk, my…” her pause was barely perceptible, “…brother will die.”
Srock made no attempt to question her further. He had helped from a sense of duty. It didn’t give him the privilege of prying. For the second time he regarded her closely. Dark, almost black hair that caught the light and reflected it as she moved her head. Brown eyes, and fine nostrils. Excitement had brought a high color to her cheeks that Srock found fascinating.
“It seems that you Brothers are becoming more numerous every day,” she said, almost as though talking to herself. “I understand there are Brothers in every occupation and class of society. You’re all followers of a code of conduct like the golden rule, aren’t you?”
“Something like that,” Srock answered. “Originally we were a small group that fought against class restrictions and segregation. From that beginning we evolved into a society with a definite philosophy: ‘No man has the right to inflict pain on another for selfish purposes,’ That may sound rather general, but it was worded thus deliberately. In time we hope to expand to other Worlds—to where-ever mankind has settled.”
The carrier came to a sputtering stop that precluded further questions. Srock climbed out. lacking his cigar in a glowing end over end arc into the street, he held open the cab door.
Jessica paused and crushed out her cigaret in the cab’s ashtray before alighting. Srock watched with approval the graceful way she moved her hands, and found that he approved also of her unconscious pride of carriage as she stepped from the cab and stood beside him on the curb.
“We have a couple more blocks to go,” she said, after he had paid the driver. “I thought it better not to give him the exact address—in case the guardsmen question him.”
They walked the two blocks in silence. At the entrance to a copper front house-of-flats she stopped and rested her hand on his arm. “I should be safe now,” she said. “Thank…” The wail of a guardcar siren came from near at hand. Her fingers dug deep into his arm.
“Quick! Inside,” she urged, tugging at his sleeve.
Srock allowed himself to be pulled through the building’s entrance into a short hallway. He was conscious that she was pressed tight against him as the sound of the siren grew louder, passed without pausing, and faded in the distance. She did not draw away after it was gone. Srock put his arms around her and felt a quivering from deep within as she fought to control her nerves.
Soon he grew aware of the warmth of her that came through her clothing into his hands and against his body. He was a man, and healthy, and he felt the faint stirrings of a kind of hunger, but he held it behind a close reserve.
Abruptly she seemed to feel this new thing in him, and looked up and was afraid: But the fear was a small thing against the terror she felt of the guardsmen.
“I can’t take being alone—for awhile anyway,” she said. “Please come up with me.”
Srock came awake with all his senses alert. He concentrated, in an effort to determine what it was that had aroused him. He did not find it at first. But the feeling persisted that something was wrong. A. heart beat later he had the answer. There was no sound of breathing beside him. He touched the bed where Jessica had lain—and the place was still warm. She must have risen only a moment before.
A small region of pain smarted in the upper bicep of his right arm. That, he recognized, was what had awakened him. The pain spread quickly and brought a strange, unnormal tension to every muscle in his body.
Desperately he tried to throw himself from the bed. His face strained with effort, but his body refused to move. He was helpless.
A flood of brightness burst before his eyes; for a moment he knew nothing, and the next the darkness of the room was gone and he was staring, unthinking, at a white ceiling.
The first shock of his discovery passed. Without moving, so much as to shift the position of his staring eyes, he sent his thoughts into urgent exploration. He knew he was in danger, and that he had to understand the situation, and to decide swiftly how to react to it.
His own body first. He breathed deeply. There were no muscular protests. A good omen. He moved the tip of one little finger. Its ready response indicated that the paralysis had left him. However, in the act of tightening the muscles that controlled the finger he felt a firm snugness along his forearm. He deeided quickly that he was bound to the bed on which he lay. Unobtrusively he tested the play of his nervous and muscular coordination on the bonds, and was tempted to apply the technique of leverage he had learned under the Brothers’ training.
The risk, he decided instantly, would be too great, at least until he learned more about his immediate surroundings. One other factor disturbed him: Small islands of numbness about his temples told him that pressure had recently been applied to his forehead.
He caught a slight movement from the comer of his eye and dismissed further immediate thought of himself. A voice said, “It looks like we did a good job.”
“Do you think the mind block will hold?” a second, deeper voice asked.
“They invariably do. And I’m not concerned too much about the superimposed memory. But if the suggestions we put in conflict too strongly with his natural inclinations he’ll be able to resist them.”
“Well, that’s the chance he took when he came here. Shall we go ahead with the final step?”
Srock set his’ muscles, threw himself forward, and…
II
Sunlight coming in through a crack between the window shade and the sill, fell across Srock’s face and wakened him. He allowed himself the luxury of a yawn and a long stretch before bringing his attention to his surroundings. For a moment he was puzzled as to where he was. Then he remembered. Jessica! Where was she? The bed beside him was empty, and there were no woman signs anywhere in the room. Why had she left like that?
The ringing of the house caller on the wall interrupted his thoughts. Reluctantly he rose and walked to the instrument. He pressed its response button.
“Good afternoon,” a robot voice said. “Your forty hours have expired. If you wish to continue occupancy please deposit another three-piece.”
Forty hours? He couldn’t have been here that long. They had rented the room only last night. And it should be morning now. He shook the sleep from his mind and drew back the window shade. Semi-twilight. That meant that one sun had already set. It was evening.
/>
“What is the correct date?” he asked into the caller mouthpiece.
“The date is the twelfth day of the third moon-month,” the mechanical replied. “You have one hour in which to either deposit an additional fee or vacate.”
They had entered the night of the tenth. It wasn’t possible that he had slept for forty hours. Unless he had been drugged. Still puzzled, he replaced the receiver and walked to the room’s small closet. His clothes hung as he remembered placing them. He took out his coin sack and found the money still intact. Next his fingers explored his belt. A crinkly stiffness within the fabric assured him that the large bill he carried there, in a concealed pocket, had not been disturbed.
Still puzzled, Srock dressed and left the room. He walked down the stairs to the ground floor and out of the building. At a street corner he bought a packet of cigars. He pressed the quarter-piece firmly into the palm of the vender as he paid for his purchase.
“General summons,” the vender said in an undertone. “The nearest Cradle is three blocks straight ahead.”
Srock gave no sign that he heard.
“It’s coming through in scrambler code,” the Brother next to Srock said. “It’ll take a minute for the decoder to interpret it.”
“Attention, Brothers,” the decoding machine intoned. “This is your message: Three weeks ago Director Cartee published a letter in the news sheets which I will now read. Quote. To the people of the planet Haviliand: I, Cartee, your thirteenth Director, will be your last. During the next six months I will initiate steps toward setting up a democratic government, similar to that of our home World, Earth. At the end of that time your new government will be ready to function, and I will then step down and become Cartee, private citizen. May God guide and aid you. Unquote.
“May God help us if we believe him,” the voice went on, the vehemence of the words contrasting with the unemotional tone of the interpreting instrument. “Almost two hundred years ago the seventh Director issued a much similar statement; three months later all the leaders of a rapidly-growing opposition were dead.
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