Invasion of the Robots

by Roger Elwood

“Small though it be, the charge behind that stud is really something! It will vaporize his insides and scatter the rest like buckshot over a radius of four hundred yards. The enemy could pick up nothing more than the knowledge that he had been a tin man.”

  “He is conditioned to take that way out?” persisted Kluge.

  “Definitely. He cannot avoid doing so. A robot has no instinct of self-preservation.”

  “One other thing. There is a touch of the Frankenstein monster about this creation. It makes me wonder whether he can become warped.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He will focus his rays upon those whom he has been told to kill. But your earlier reports claimed that you had endowed him with ability to think within all necessary limits. What if he takes it into his head to kill anyone he chooses to kill? You, for example?”

  Speidel did not bother to answer that one. He tidied William Smith’s front, inserted a peculiar key in his back, turned it. The figure stirred, Speidel positioned himself directly in front of William Smith at exactly six-foot range and looked straight into the robot’s eyes.

  “Give him the command,” suggested Speidel to Kluge.

  “Kill him!” snapped Kluge without hesitation.

  “I cannot focus my rays upon my makers,” declared William Smith in flat, even tones.

  “Why not?”

  “It has been made functionally impossible.”

  “He has an inhibiting circuit,” explained Speidel, taking it for granted that Kluge understood. “He cannot create cerebral hemorrhage in Wurmser or myself. He cannot accept orders from anybody but Wurmser and myself.” He grinned at Kluge. “Now if Wurmser had shouted, ‘Kill him!’ we’d all be dead.”

  “Why?” asked Kluge, startled.

  “The order would have presented an unsolvable problem. Result: one hell of a bang!”

  He handed Kluge’s list to William Smith. “You will favor those men with a destroying stare and return here as soon as you can.”

  “As you order,” agreed William Smith. He folded the list with slender fingers indistinguishable from the human, placed it in a pocket. Then he took a hat from a hook, set it jauntily on his head, and went out. Kluge watched with unconcealed interest.

  When the door had closed, Kluge said, “How long can he keep going?”

  “Three hundred days.”

  “What if there should be long, unavoidable delays before he can complete his task? What if his power begins to fail before he can get back here? If he should exhaust his energy and become inanimate, somebody’s going to pick up a revealing toy, isn’t he?”

  “No,” said Speidel positively. “Immediately he realizes that he cannot return in adequate time, he also realizes that he must conform to an order impossible to obey. That creates an unsolvable problem to which the only answer is self-destruction.” He sniffed to show impatience of quibblers, added, “Anyway, the job in hand should require no more than sixty days. He can last five times that long.”

  “You appear to have thought of everything,” Kluge conceded.

  “Everything humanly possible,” Wurmser chipped in. “We have sent him out on ten short but complicated journeys to date, testing his ability to get around and cope with everyday problems. Each trip resulted in further modifications. Right now he is as near perfection as it’s possible to make him."

  “I hope so.” Crossing to the window, Kluge drew aside the curtains, looked out. He was still fascinated. “There he is, getting onto a bus as to the manner born.”

  “He can do a thousand other things,” informed Speidel. “He can employ surliness to discourage dangerous friendships. When facilities permit, he will travel by night as well as by day and fill in the dark hours with mock sleep. He knows precisely what to do to conceal his inability to eat and drink.” He sighed long and deeply. “We have overlooked nothing. None can do more.”

  “I concede extreme cleverness without admitting perfection,” said Kluge. He closed the curtains. “Death will be the true test!”

  “William Smith hates personal power insofar as a complex machine can be induced to hate anything,” answered Speidel. “Therefore he is the ideal instrument for destroying such power. You wait and see!”

  Newton P. Fisher heaved his ample hulk out of the big limousine, puffed his hanging chops, let his fish eyes glower at the quiet, well-dressed young man waiting on the sidewalk.

  “No comment,” he growled. “Beat it!”

  “But Mr. Fisher, I have been assigned to—”

  “Then get your self unassigned. I've had more than a bellyful of you reporters.”

  “Please, Mr. Fisher. My name is Smith, William Smith.” The words came swiftly, trying to bold the other while something in his gaze burned through. “If you will grant me a mere minute of your time—”

  “You heard what I said. I said no comment!” Fisher glared at him eye to eye and never felt it. Then he spoke to a blue-jowled, burly man who had followed him out of the car. “Pawson, see that I’m not bothered by this one or any more like him.” He marched pompously into the building, and nobody noticed his steps beginning to falter as he passed from sight.

  Folding thick arms across a big chest, Pawson stared belligerently at the would-be interviewer, didn’t like the obvious fact that the other was not fazed.

  “Get moving, brother. Your paper can go to town with the boss when he’s dead.”

  “That won’t be long,” said William Smith, strangely assured. Tipping his hat slightly farther back on his head, he walked away, impassive, unhurried.

  “Hear what he said?” Pawson asked the car driver. “He’s making ready with the obit. A real wit, ain’t he? I’m laughing myself sick. Bah!”

  “Just a nut,” offered the driver. He put a finger to his forehead, made a screwing motion.

  Pawson mounted the steps just used by Fisher. “Stick around, Lou. The boss won’t be late on this biz.” He went through the door.

  Leaning on the steering wheel, the driver picked his teeth and mooned idly at the street. William Smith, he noted, had now rounded the far corner and passed from sight.

  Pawson reappeared in about two minutes. He emerged from the doorway and came down the steps at a clumsy run. Reaching the car, he held onto a door handle while he panted for breath. His eyes were yellowish and his features seemed molded in stale dough.

  After a bit he wheezed, “Holy Christmas!”

  “Something wrong?” inquired the driver, waking up.

  “Wrong ain’t the word.” Pawson sucked in another deep lungful. ’The boss just cashed in his chips.”

  There was nothing about this Brussels office to suggest that Raoul Lefevre was big enough to be known, noted, and struck down. Neither was there anything outstanding about the appearance of Lefevre himself. Slight, dapper, and dark, he looked no more than a modest businessman.

  “Sit down, Mr. Smith.” His English was perfect, his manner smooth. “So you had contact with the late Newton P. Fisher. His end was a great shock. It upset quite a lot of things.”

  “As was intended,” said William Smith.

  “Many of them may not be reorganized for months, perhaps years, and—” His gaze lifted sharply. “What was that remark you just made?”

  “As was intended.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “The Fisherless chaos was created.”

  Leaning forward, elbows on desk, Lefevre said slowly and deliberately, “Press reports make no suggestion that Fisher’s death was engineered. Are you asserting that he was murdered?”

  “Executed,” corrected William Smith.

  Studying him carefully, Lefevre demanded, “Who sent you here to tell me this?”

  “I have come automatically.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are next on the list.”

  “Next? On what list? Whose list?”

  “Mine.”

  “Ah!” Lefevre’s hand came up from behind the desk with the swiftness of a str
iking snake. It held a large blued-steel automatic. “I perceive that you have gained this meeting by means of a trick. You are not connected with Fisher in any way. You are merely another crank. I have long been the target of cranks. In my position it is inevitable.”

  “You won’t suffer them much longer,” assured William Smith.

  “I do not intend to suffer them at all,” Lefevre retorted. He kept his full attention on William Smith’s eyes, held the automatic as steady as a rock while with his free hand he pressed a desk stud. To the one who answered he said, “Emile, show Mr. Smith outside. See that he is not permitted to enter again.”

  “There will be no need for me to return,” said William Smith. He departed with the silent Emile and was conscious of the other’s grim stare following him through the door.

  Crossing the road, he found a bench in the tiny gardens facing Lefevre’s office block, sat there, waited. Now and again he studied the overhead telephone wires as if speculating what vocal impulses might be running through them.

  Twenty-four minutes later a dilapidated car hustled squeakily up to the main door. A bearded man got out, bearing a black bag. He entered the building in the manner of one with not a single moment to waste. Still William Smith sat and watched the windows.

  After another five minutes someone pulled down the heavy sun blinds and darkened the windows. William Smith did not wait for the death wagon to arrive.

  Ignace Tatarescu smoothed his black, skintight uniform, adjusted the black and gold ribbon of a jeweled order around his neck, carefully centered its sparkling cross in line with his triple row of brag-rags.

  “This Smith could have offered himself at a more convenient time,” he grumbled to his valet. “However, he is well introduced, too well to ignore. I had better favor him with a few minutes.” He studied himself in a full-length mirror, turning this way and that. “Always I am finding a few minutes for someone. Where would the world be if I had not enough minutes?”

  “It is the penalty of greatness, your Excellency,” said the valet, dexterously registering humility.

  “I suppose so. Oh, well, show him in. Have a small table set with sweetmeats and brandied coffee." He paraded to his favorite spot beneath an enormous painting of himself, struck his favorite pose, and held it until the visitor entered, “Mr. Smith?”

  “Yes, your Excellency.”

  “Please be seated.” Lowering himself into an ornate chair, Tatarescu ran finger and thumb along the knife-edge creases of colorful pants. “About what do you wish to see me, Mr. Smith?”

  “Your power.”

  “Ah, my power.” Tatarescu preened himself visibly and went on with false deprecation, “My power, such as it is, I derive from the people, from the great mass of loyal supporters, the true patriots. It is my greatest regret that this simple fact is not too well understood in other—”

  “You have too much of it,” chipped in William Smith with appalling bluntness.

  Tatarescu blinked, stared at him, gave a laugh of pretended joviality. “What a diplomat! You gain an interview and promptly use it to criticize my position for which—permit me to tell you, young man—I have fought long and hard.”

  "More’s the pity,” remarked William Smith imperturbably.

  “Eh? What the devil d’you mean by that?” He scowled across, eye to eye.

  “Surrendering it will come so much the harder.”

  “I have not the slightest intention of relinquishing my position. When Tatarescu gives up, Tatarescu will be dead.”

  “You said it!” William Smith endorsed.

  Maintaining an unswerving gaze upon the other, Tatarescu said in low tones, “We are not alone. One overt move on your part will mark your end.” He raised his voice, called, “Take this irresponsible idiot away.” Then to Smith, “You will be granted no more interviews by me.”

  “No,” agreed William Smith. “Of course not.”

  Half a dozen frowning guards accompanied him to the main gates. Climbing a rugged, rambling path to the crest of the nearby hill, he sat cross-legged on the top and watched the palace below. Dusk was falling and lights beginning to twinkle in the adjacent city.

  He had not been waiting very long when the bells of the city commenced to toll monotonously, and loudspeakers of the civic address system boomed the news along streets and alleys.

  “Al Marechai murte!"

  “The Leader is dead!”

  Behind the slums of Tangier, at the desert end of the Street of the Ouled Nails, lay the Sharia Ahmed Hassan, a long, dark, dirty lane through which William Smith carefully picked his way.

  Counting the low doors set in the massive wall at one side, he reached the one he wanted, pulled its dangling bell cord. Soon a thin-featured Arab peered out, took his card.

  He heard the other’s slippers shuffling through the night shadows of the courtyard and a low, distant mutter of “A Giaour!”

  Minutes crawled past before the Arab returned, beckoned to him, led him through numberless passages, and into a large, deeply carpeted room. The richness of the furnishings was out of keeping with the slummy locality; the place suggested the haunt of power in hiding.

  Inside, William Smith stopped and surveyed an old white-bearded man facing him across a low octagonal table. The oldster was seated on a cushion. He had a beak nose, rheumy but crafty eyes, and kept his hands hidden in wide, capacious sleeves.

  “I am William Smith,” informed the visitor.

  The other nodded, said in rasping tones, “So your card says.”

  “You are Abou ben Sayyid es Harouma?”

  “I am. What of it?”

  “You are to return to the obscurity whence you came.”

  Drawing a hand from his sleeve, Abou ben Sayyid stroked his short white beard. “You sent me a letter advising of your coming. You are to talk business on behalf of the New Order. There is no war, and the last one has been over a long time. The need for cipher messages no longer exists. Speak plainly. I have had enough of reading between words.”

  “I have done so.”

  “Then it is not plain to me.” The rheumy eyes lifted, examined him with care. That was the moment he did not sense and nothing could undo.

  “You have exercised power too long.”

  Abou ben Sayyid smote a gong by his side and observed pointedly, “The moon is full. It is always at such a time that Hakim the Cobbler becomes queer in the head. Goodby, Mr. Smith.”

  Three servants entered on the run, grabbed William Smith, bounced him back into the lane. The door in the wall slammed shut. The bell cord hung limp, unstirring in the night air. Stars shivered in a purple sky.

  Leaning against the opposite wall, hands deep in pockets, William Smith remained until eventually a terrible keening arose from the dark.

  “Aie! Aie-e-e!”

  Beneath the sickle moon he strolled away.

  A certain Salvador de Marella of Cartagena was the fifth and last name on the list of guinea pigs. Salvador was not hard like Fisher, or sharp like Lefevre, or ruthless like Tatarescu, or cunning like Abou ben Sayyid. He was the supreme opportunist with more than his share of luck, and he enjoyed the delusion that the said luck would never run out.

  Salvador had all the hearty, backslapping humor of the really successful gambler. He interviewed William Smith in a room containing twenty colorful bottles and four bosomy brunettes. William Smith politely mentioned his demise, and Salvador's reaction was characteristic. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

  And laughed himself to death.

  All three were there waiting—Speidel, Wurmser, and Kluge—when William Smith came back. The first two were quietly triumphant, the last one stolid. They had not needed to await their instrument’s personal report of his deeds. The newspapers, the radio, and the video had already told them enough. Giants, even shadowland giants, do not topple without great noise.

  William Smith entered, hung up his hat, glanced around with the air of a business executive satisfying himself that all w
ere present.

  “Perfect!” declared Speidel, openly gratified. “Perfect right up to the prompt and obedient return. A boomerang that comes straight back to the thrower so that it can be used again and again and again. What more could the High Command want than a thousand invincible William Smiths?”

  “Drop them in any country and it becomes decapitated,” remarked Wurmser. “Its leaders will be dead while the stupid masses mill around like frightened sheep.”

  Pursing his lips, Kluge said, “As stated before, I concede ingenuity but not perfection. For example, there would be far less risk of making the enemy a free gift of him if he did not have to confer with his victims face to face. Such a tactic creates a series of coincidences which some sharp mind might notice and pursue.”

  “It is unavoidable. He must gain precise focus and hold it a brief time. How else can that be done?”

  “Could you not lengthen the focus and give him greater range, such as one hundred yards? The High Command will provide funds for further research.”

  Speidel exchanged with Wurmser the pained looks of those compelled to batter their heads against a wall of ignorance. Then Speidel said, “We can extend the focus to a thousand yards or more. But it would be of no use.”

  “Why not?”

  “The longer the range the greater the power loss. At a thousand yards he would need twenty minutes of concentration to heat the root of a hair—if he could hit it and hold it at that distance, which he could not. The mere thought is absurd.”

  “Six feet is the maximum range permitting swift result,” interjected Wurmser. “Beyond that, efficiency diminishes rapidly. If you want more, we’ll have to fit him with a dual projector four times the size of himself and switch him from human form to convincing semblance of a tame elephant.”

  “I will overlook the sarcasm,” said Kluge stiffly, “and recommend that this robotic weapon be taken up forthwith with a view to reproduction in numbers.”

  “Under our supervision,” reminded Speidel. “Only we two hold its secrets, and we intend to retain them.”

  “You may do so,” promised Kluge. “The fewer minds holding such knowledge, the safer we shall be from the prying fingers of the enemy’s intelligence service,”