Notions: Unlimited

by Robert Sheckley

  “All?” the captain laughed humorlessly. “Homicide has increased by fifty percent. There’s more murder now than there’s ever been.”

  “Sure,” Celtrics said. “The watchbirds are too busy guarding cars and slugging spiders.” He started toward the door, then turned for a parting shot.

  “Take my word, Captain. Machines are stupid.”

  The captain nodded.

  Thousands of watchbirds, trying to stop countless millions of murders—a hopeless task. But the watchbirds didn’t hope. Without consciousness, they experienced no sense of accomplishment, no fear of failure. Patiently they went about their jobs, obeying each stimulus as it came.

  They couldn’t be everywhere at the same time, but it wasn’t necessary to be. People learned quickly what the watchbirds didn’t like and refrained from doing it. It just wasn’t safe. With their high speed and superfast senses, the watchbirds got around quickly.

  And now they meant business. In their original directives there had been a provision made for killing a murderer, if all other means failed.

  Why spare a murderer?

  It backfired. The watchbirds extracted the fact that murder and crimes of violence had increased geometrically since they had begun operation.” This was true, because their new definitions increased the possibilities of murder. But to the watchbirds, the rise showed that the first methods had failed.

  Simple logic. If A doesn’t work, try B. The watchbirds shocked to kill.

  Slaughterhouses in Chicago stopped and cattle starved to death in their pens, because farmers in the Midwest couldn’t cut hay or harvest grain.

  No one had told the watchbirds that all life depends on carefully balanced murders.

  Starvation didn’t concern the watchbirds, since it was an act of omission.

  Their interest lay only in acts of commission.

  Hunters sat home, glaring at the silver dots in the sky, longing to shoot them down. But for the most part, they didn’t try. The watchbirds were quick to sense the murder intent and to punish it.

  Fishing boats swung idle at their moorings in San Pedro and Gloucester. Fish were living organisms.

  Farmers cursed and spat and died, trying to harvest the crop. Grain was alive and thus worthy of protection. Potatoes were as important to the watchbird as any other living organism. The death of a blade of grass was equal to the assassination of a President—

  To the watchbirds.

  And, of course, certain machines were living. This followed, since the watchbirds were machines and living.

  God help you if you maltreated your radio. Turning it off meant killing it. Obviously—its voice was silenced, the red glow of its tubes faded, it grew cold.

  The watchbirds tried to guard their other charges. Wolves were slaughtered, trying to kill rabbits. Rabbits were electrocuted, trying to eat vegetables. Creepers were burned out in the act of strangling trees.

  A butterfly was executed, caught in the act of outraging a rose.

  This control was spasmodic, because of the fewness of the watchbirds. A billion watchbirds couldn’t have carried out the ambitious project set by the thousands.

  The effect was of a murderous force, ten thousand bolts of irrational lightning raging around the country, striking a thousand times a day.

  Lightning which anticipated your moves and punished your intentions.

  “Gentlemen, please,” the government representative begged. “We must hurry.”

  The seven manufacturers stopped talking.

  “Before we begin this meeting formally,” the president of Monroe said, “I want to say something. We do not feel ourselves responsible for this unhappy state of affairs. It was a government project; the government must accept the responsibility, both moral and financial.”

  Gelsen shrugged his shoulders. It was hard to believe that these men, just a few weeks ago, had been willing to accept the glory of saving the world. Now they wanted to shrug off the responsibility when the salvation went amiss.

  “I’m positive that that need not concern us now,” the representative assured him. “We must hurry. You engineers have done an excellent job. I am proud of the cooperation you have shown in this emergency. You are hereby empowered to put the outlined plan into action.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gelsen said.

  “There is no time.”

  “The plan’s no good.”

  “Don’t you think it will work?”

  “Of course it will work. But I’m afraid the cure will be worse than the disease.”

  The manufacturers looked as though they would have enjoyed throttling Gelsen. He didn’t hesitate.

  “Haven’t we learned yet?” he asked. “Don’t you see that you can’t cure human problems by mechanization?”

  “Mr. Gelsen,” the president of Monroe said, “I would enjoy hearing you philosophize, but unfortunately, people are being killed. Crops are being ruined. There is famine in some sections of the country already. The watchbirds must be stopped at once!”

  “Murder must be stopped, too. I remember all of us agreeing upon that. But this is not the way!”

  “What would you suggest?” the representative asked.

  Gelsen took a deep breath. What he was about to say took all the courage he had.

  “Let the watchbirds run down by themselves,” Gelsen suggested.

  There was a near-riot. The government representative broke it up.

  “Let’s take our lesson,” Gelsen urged, “admit that we were wrong trying to cure human problems by mechanical means. Start again. Use machines, yes, but not as judges and teachers and fathers.”

  “Ridiculous,” the representative said coldly. “Mr. Gelsen, you are overwrought. I suggest you control yourself.” He cleared his throat. “All of you are ordered by the President to carry out the plan you have submitted.” He looked sharply at Gelsen. “Not to do so will be treason.”

  “I’ll cooperate to the best of my ability,” Gelsen said.

  “Good. Those assembly lines must be rolling within the week.”

  Gelsen walked out of the room alone. Now he was confused again. Had he been right or was he just another visionary? Certainly, he hadn’t explained himself with much clarity.

  Did he know what he meant?

  Gelsen cursed under his breath. He wondered why he couldn’t ever be sure of anything. Weren’t there any values he could hold on to?

  He hurried to the airport and to his plant.

  The watchbird was operating erratically now. Many of its delicate parts were out of line, worn by almost continuous operation. But gallantly it responded when the stimuli came.

  A spider was attacking a fly. The watchbird swooped down to the rescue.

  Simultaneously, it became aware of something overhead. The watchbird wheeled to meet it.

  There was a sharp crackle and a power bolt whizzed by the watchbird’s wing. Angrily, it spat a shock wave.

  The attacker was heavily insulated. Again it spat at the watchbird. This time, a bolt smashed through a wing. The watchbird darted away, but the attacker went after it in a burst of speed, throwing out more crackling power.

  The watchbird fell, but managed to send out its message. Urgent! A new menace to living organisms and this was the deadliest yet!

  Other watchbirds around the country integrated the message. Their thinking centers searched for an answer.

  “Well, Chief, they bagged fifty today,” Macintyre said, coming into Gelsen’s office.

  “Fine,” Gelsen said, not looking at the engineer.

  “Not so fine.” Macintyre sat down. “Lord, I’m tired! It was seventy-two yesterday.”

  “I know.” On Gelsen’s desk were several dozen lawsuits, which he was sending to the government with a prayer.

  “They’ll pick up again, though,” Macintyre said confidently. “The Hawks are especially built to hunt down watchbirds. They’re stronger, faster, and they’ve got better armor. We really rolled them out in a hurry, huh?”


  “We sure did.”

  “The watchbirds are pretty good, too,” Macintyre had to admit. “They’re learning to take cover. They’re trying a lot of stunts. You know, each one that goes down tells the others something.”

  Gelsen didn’t answer.

  “But anything the watchbirds can do, the Hawks can do better,” Macintyre said cheerfully. “The Hawks have special learning circuits for hunting. They’re more flexible than the watchbirds. They learn faster.”

  Gelsen gloomily stood up, stretched, and walked to the window. The sky was blank. Looking out, he realized that his uncertainties were over. Right or wrong, he had made up his mind.

  “Tell me,” he said, still watching the sky, “what will the Hawks hunt after they get all the watchbirds?”

  “Huh?” Macintyre said. “Why—”

  “Just to be on the safe side, you’d better design something to hunt down the Hawks. Just in case, I mean.”

  “You think—”

  “All I know is that the hawks are self-controlled. So were the watchbirds. Remote control would have been too slow, the argument went. The idea was to get the watchbirds and get them fast. That meant no restricting circuits.”

  “We can dope something out,” Macintyre said uncertainly.

  “You’ve got an aggressive machine up in the air now. A murder machine. Before that it was an anti-murder machine. Your next gadget will have to be even more self-sufficient, won’t it?”

  Macintyre didn’t answer.

  “I don’t hold you responsible,” Gelsen said. “It’s me. It’s everyone.”

  In the air outside was a swift-moving dot.

  “That’s what comes,” said Gelsen, “of giving a machine the job that was our own responsibility.”

  Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself.

  But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too—

  Which had to be murdered.

  A WIND IS RISING

  Outside, a wind was rising. But within the station, the two men had other things on their minds. Clayton turned the handle of the water faucet again and waited. Nothing happened.

  “Try hitting it,” said Nerishev.

  Clayton pounded the faucet with his fist. Two drops of water came out. A third drop trembled on the spigot’s lip, swayed, and fell. That was all.

  “That does it,” Clayton said bitterly. “That damned water pipe is blocked again. How much water we got in storage?”

  “Four gallons—assuming the tank hasn’t sprung another leak,” said Nerishev. He stared at the faucet, tapping it with long, nervous fingers. He was a big, pale man with a sparse beard, fragile-looking in spite of his size. He didn’t look like the type to operate an observation station on a remote and alien planet. But the Advance Exploration Corps had discovered, to its regret, that there was no type to operate a station.

  Nerishev was a competent biologist and botanist. Although chronically nervous, he had surprising reserves of calm. He was the sort of man who needs an occasion to rise to. This, if anything, made him suitable to pioneer a planet like Carella I.

  “I suppose somebody should go out and unblock the water pipe,” said Nerishev, not looking at Clayton.

  “I suppose so,” Clayton said, pounding the faucet again. “But it’s going to be murder out there. Listen to it!”

  Clayton was a short man, bull-necked, red-faced, powerfully constructed. This was his third tour of duty as a planetary observer.

  He had tried other jobs in the Advance Exploration Corps, but none had suited him. PEP—Primary Extraterrestrial Penetration—faced him with too many unpleasant surprises. It was work for daredevils and madmen. But Base Operations was much too tame and restricting.

  He liked the work of a planetary observer, though. His job was to sit tight on a planet newly opened by the PEP boys and checked out by a drone camera crew. All he had to do on this planet was stoically endure discomfort and skillfully keep himself alive. After a year of this, the relief ship would remove him and note his report. On the basis of the report, further action would or would not be taken.

  Before each tour of duty, Clayton dutifully promised his wife that this would be the last. After this tour, he was going to stay on Earth and work on the little farm he owned. He promised....

  But at the end of each rest leave, Clayton journeyed out again, to do the thing for which he was best suited: staying alive through skill and endurance.

  But this time, he had had it. He and Nerishev had been eight months on Carella. The relief ship was due in another four months. If he came through alive, he was going to quit for good.

  “Just listen to that wind,” Nerishev said.

  Muffled, distant, it sighed and murmured around the steel hull of the station like a zephyr, a summer breeze.

  That was how it sounded to them inside the station, separated from the wind by three inches of steel plus a soundproofing layer.

  “It’s rising,” Clayton said. He walked over to the wind-speed indicator. According to the dial, the gentle-sounding wind was blowing at a steady 82 miles an hour—

  A light breeze on Carella.

  “Man, oh, man!” Clayton said. “I don’t want to go out there. Nothing’s worth going out there.”

  “It’s your turn,” Nerishev pointed out.

  “I know. Let me complain a little first, will you? Come on, let’s get a forecast from Smanik.”

  They walked the length of the station, their heels echoing on the steel floor, past compartments filled with food, air supplies, instruments, extra equipment. At the far end of the station was the heavy metal door of the receiving shed. The men slipped on air masks and adjusted the flow.

  “Ready?” Clayton asked.

  “Ready.”

  They braced themselves, gripping handholds beside the door. Clayton touched the stud. The door slid away and a gust of wind shrieked in. The men lowered their heads and butted into the wind, entering the receiving shed.

  The shed was an extension of the station, some thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide. It was not sealed, like the rest of the structure. The walls were built of openwork steel, with baffles set in. The wind could pass through this arrangement, but slowed down, controlled. A gauge told them it was blowing 34 miles an hour within the shed.

  It was a damned nuisance, Clayton thought, having to confer with the natives of Carella in a 34-mile gale. But there was no other way. The Carellans, raised on a planet where the wind never blew less than 70 miles an hour, couldn’t stand the “dead air” within the station. Even with the oxygen content cut down to the Carellan norm, the natives couldn’t make the adjustment. Within the station, they grew dizzy and apprehensive. Soon they began strangling, like a man in a vacuum.

  Thirty-four miles an hour of wind was a fair compromise-point for human and Carellan to meet.

  Clayton and Nerishev walked down the shed. In one corner lay what looked like a tangle of dried-out octopi. The tangle stirred and waved two tentacles ceremoniously.

  “Good day,” said Smanik.

  “Good day,” Clayton said. “What do you think of the weather?”

  “Excellent,” said Smanik.

  Nerishev tugged at Clayton’s sleeve. “What did he say?” he asked, and nodded thoughtfully when Clayton translated it for him. Nerishev lacked Clayton’s gift for language. Even after eight months, the Carellan tongue was still an undecipherable series of clicks and whistles to him.

  Several more Carellans came up to join the conversation. They all looked like spiders or octopi, with their small centralized body and long, flexible tentacles. This was the optimum survival shape on Carella, and Clayton frequently envied it. He was forced to rely absolutely on the shelter of the station; but the Carellans lived directly in their environment.

  Often he had seen a na
tive walking against a tornado-force wind, seven or eight limbs hooked into the ground and pulling, other tentacles reaching out for further grips. He had seen them rolling down the wind like tumbleweed, their tentacles curled around them, wickerwork-basket fashion. He thought of the gay and audacious way they handled their land ships, scudding merrily along on the wind....

  Well, he thought, they’d look damned silly on Earth.

  “What is the weather going to be like?” he asked Smanik.

  The Carellan pondered the question for a while, sniffed the wind and rubbed two tentacles together.

  “The wind may rise a shade more,” he said finally. “But it will be nothing serious.”

  Clayton wondered. Nothing serious for a Carellan could mean disaster for an Earthman. Still, it sounded fairly promising.

  He and Nerishev left the receiving shed and closed the door.

  “Look,” said Nerishev, “if you’d like to wait—”

  “Might as well get it over with,” Clayton said.

  Here, lighted by a single dim overhead bulb, was the smooth, glittering bulk of the Brute. That was the nickname they had given to the vehicle specially constructed for transportation on Carella.

  The Brute was armored like a tank and streamlined like a spheric section. It had vision slits of shatterproof glass, thick enough to match the strength of its steel plating. Its center of gravity was low; most of its twelve tons were centered near the ground. The Brute was sealed. Its heavy diesel engine, as well as all necessary openings, were fitted with special dustproof covers. The Brute rested on its six fat tires, looking, in its immovable bulk, like some prehistoric monster.

  Clayton got in, put on crash helmet and goggles, and strapped himself into the padded seat. He revved up the engine, listened to it critically, then nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, “the Brute’s ready. Get upstairs and open the garage door.”

  “Good luck,” said Nerishev. He left.

  Clayton went over the instrument panel, making sure that all the Brute’s special gadgets were in working order. In a moment, he heard Nerishev’s voice coming in over the radio.

  “I’m opening the door.”