by C. L. Moore
He looked down at the robot. “Wait a while,” he said. “Broome will know.”
The robot’s arms bent. The steel hands closed upon the sides of the box, and with a shriek of metal parting from metal it ripped the box apart.
Now it was born. Born? Untimely ripped, Conway thought. Untimely ripped. … I suppose I was wrong. What next?
Ego rose upright, eight feel tall, solid as a tower, and like a walking tower it moved. It moved straight forward until the wall stopped it. Slowly it turned, its cone of vision sweeping the room, its motions at first jerky and uneven, but becoming smoother and surer with the warming-up process of the newly activated machine. It was still trembling just perceptibly, and the ticking rose and fell inside it, drew out in slow series, quickened, burst into rapid chatter, slowed again. Sorting, accepting, rejecting, evaluating the new-found world which was now the robot’s burden. …
It saw the wall of control panels which had activated it. The beam of its sight swept the panels briefly, and then with a burst of surprising speed it rushed across the room towards the panels. Its hands danced over the plugboard, the switches, the dials.
Nothing happened. The panels were dead.
“Want. …” said the hollow, inhuman cry from Ego’s reverberating chest. And with two sweeps of the steel hands it sheared cleanly off the board all the projecting globes and dials and switches. It sank steel fingers into the sockets and ripped the plating off. It wound both hands deep into the coloured wiring inside and ripped great handfuls out in a sort of measured frenzy.
“Ego!” Conway said.
It heard him. It turned, very fast. The bright gaze bathed him for a moment. He felt cold as it held him in its focus, as if a mind the temperature of steel were locked with his. He could almost feel the touch of the new-fledged, infinitely resourceful brain.
The light of its gaze passed him and saw the door. It dismissed Conway. It surged forward like a tank and hit the door flatly with its chest, cracking the panels in two. With a single motion it swept the wreckage away on both sides and rolled forward through the splintered frame.
By the time Conway reached the door the robot was a long way off down the underground corridor, moving faster and faster, dwindling towards the vanishing point like a shrinking drop of quicksilver. Going—somewhere.
“General Conway, sir,” somebody said.
He turned. The two MPs flanked Abraham Broome, who was craning forward trying to see the wrecked instrument panel from between them.
“Dismissed,” Conway said. “Come in, Broome.”
The old man went past him obliviously, stooped over Garden’s body, shook his head.
“I was afraid of something like this,” he said.
Conway felt a moment of intense envy for the motionless Garden. He said, “Yes. I’m sorry. One casualty. We’ll all be casualties if Ego doesn’t work. How do we know what the other side’s doing now? Maybe they’ve got an Ego too. I made a mistake, Broome. I should have looked ahead a little further. What do we do now?”
“What happened?” Broome was looking incredulously at the shattered wall where the instrument panels had been. “Where’s the robot now? I’ve got to know the details.”
A communicator high on the wall coughed and then called Conway’s name. Slowly and heavily Conway’s mind tried to accept the new demands. But what the communicator said was a jumble of meaningless sounds until one word sprang out at him. Emergency.
Attack? An alarm rang shrilly deep in his head. “Repeat,” he said wearily.
“General Conway? A robot is destroying equipment in Sector Sub-Five. Attempts to immobilize it are failing. General Conway? A robot is destroying——”
“All right,” Conway said. At least, this wasn’t an attack, then. Or anyway, not an attack from the enemy. “Conway here. Orders. Don’t harm the robot. Instructions follow. Stand by.”
He looked at Broome inquiringly, realizing that the old man had been buzzing at him anxiously in meaningless words. “General, General, I’ve got to know exactly what happened——”
“Shut up and I’ll tell you,” Conway said. “Wait.”
He walked over to a hand basin at the wall, drew a glass of chemical-tasting water and found the tube of benzedrine pills in his pocket. It wouldn’t help much. He had been living on the stuff too long. But this ought to be the last push—had to be the last—and every extra ounce of stimulus helped. He could let go soon, but not yet.
He gave Broome a concise, thirty-second summary in a falsely brisk voice. The old man stood silent, pinching his lip and gazing at Conway with a blank face, his mind obviously ranging around the abstract regions inside his head.
“Well?” Conway asked. “What do you think? Is it running wild or isn’t it?” He wanted to reach out and shake Broome awake, but he pushed the impulse down. Once already he had forced the issue over Broome’s protest, and he had been wrong. Perhaps fatally wrong. Now he must let the old man think.
“I believe it’s on the job,” Broome said with maddening deliberation. “I was afraid of something like this—uncontrolled reaction. But the programme’s built into it I think it’s operating towards the goal we set it. One thing’s wrong, of course. It ought to communicate better. There shouldn’t be that speech block. We’ll have to find out what it wants and why it can’t tell us.” He paused and blinked up at the corn-box on the wall. “Sub-five, didn’t they say? What’s in SubFive?”
“The library,” Conway said, and they looked at each other in silence for a second. Then Conway sighed another of his deep, collapsing sighs and said, “Well, we’ve got to stop it, somehow, and fast. Ego’s the most important thing we’ve got, but if it tears the whole base up——”
“Not quite the most important,” Broome said. “Have you thought what it may do next? Since the library was its first goal?”
“What? Don’t make me guess.”
“It seems to be hunting information. The next stop after the library might be the computers, don’t you think?”
Conway said, “Good God,” in a flat, exhausted tone. Then he laughed a little without making a sound. He would have to jump into action in the next few moments, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He’d been a fool, of course, pushing action on the robot too soon. Without precautions. He’d gambled, and maybe he had lost. But he knew he’d still do the same if he had it to do over. The gamble wasn’t lost yet. And what alternative had he?
“Yes,” he said. “The computers. You’re right. If it goes after them we’ll have to smash it.”
“If we can,” Broome said soberly. “It thinks fast”
Wearily Conway straightened his shoulders, wondering whether the benzedrine was going to take hold this time. He didn’t feel it yet, but he couldn’t wait.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get going. We know our jobs. Mine’s to immobilize Ego, unless he goes for the computers. Yours—find out what he wants. Get it from him before he smashes himself and us. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.” He gripped Broome’s thin arm and hurried him towards the door. On the way he touched his lapel switch and said into the receptive hum at his shoulder, “Conway here. I’m on my way in. Where’s the robot?”
The thin little voice of the mike started to say, “Just leaving Sub-Five, sir—through the wall. We——” But then the corn-box in the laboratory behind them coughed loudly and shouted out in a metallic bellow. “Robot broke through the wall into Sub-Seventeen!” There was a tinny astonishment in its voice. “Destroying equipment in storage files——” All of this was funnelled through the Communications Room, and the echoes of the complaint from Sub-Seventeen could be heard mingling confusedly through the lapel mike. Conway clicked it on and off several times.
“Com Room!” he said into the noisy turmoil. “Find out which way the robot’s heading.”
There was a brief pause, during which the com box behind them roared out its diminishing report of damage. Then, “It’s heading inward, sir,” the mike said thinly
. “Toward Sub-Thirty8221;
Conway glanced down at Broome, who nodded and shaped a silent word with his lips. “Computers.” Conway set his jaw.
“Start sending up heavy-duty robots to head it off,” he told the mike crisply. “Immobilize the robot if you can but don’t damage him without my orders.” He laid his hand over the lapel mike to deafen it, hearing a small, distant uproar filtering out from under his palm as he urged Broome to a trot down the long corridor where the robot had dwindled to a shining dot such a short time ago. But he was hearing his own last words repeating over and over in un diminishing echoes inside his head. “My orders—my orders—my orders “
He thought he could go on giving orders—up to a point. Just long enough to get Ego under control. No longer.
“Broome,” he said abruptly, “can the robot take over?” And he held his breath waiting for the answer, wondering what he would do if it was no.
“I never doubted it,” Broome said. Conway let his breath out with a feeling of luxury in the sigh. But Broome went on, “If we can find out why he went wrong, of course. I have an idea, but I don’t see how I can test it——”
“What?”
“Maybe an iteration loop. A closed series of steps that repeat themselves over and over. But I don’t know what’s involved. He says ‘want’ and then blocks completely. I don’t know why. Some compulsion is driving him so powerfully he doesn’t even bother to open doors to get at what it is he wants. I don’t know what. My job’s to find out.”
Conway thought to himself, “Maybe I know what.” But he didn’t explore the thought. It was too chilly in the mind, and yet so simple he wondered why Broome hadn’t thought of it. Or maybe he had. …
Ego’s goal was winning the war. But suppose it was not possible to win the war? …
Conway shook his head sharply and put that idea firmly away.
“Okay, you know your job,” he said. “Now about mine—how can we stop him without harming him?” With a small fraction of his mind he noticed that he was personalizing the robot now. Ego had begun to assume an identity.
Broome shook his head unhappily as he trotted beside Conway. “That’s one reason I was afraid to activate him.” Broome was doing it too. “He’s complex, General. I’ve got him pretty well cushioned against normal jolts, but an artificial brain isn’t like a human brain. One little injury means malfunction. And besides, he’s so fast I’m not sure what would stop him even if we didn’t have to worry about damage.”
“There’s a limit to what I can bring up in time, anyhow,” Conway said. ̴What about ultrasonics? We could cripple him, maybe——”
“Let me think about it. Ultrasonics that close might scramble something.” Broome was panting heavily from their rapid pace.
Conway uncovered the mike. “Com Room? Get a supersonic squad in the computer room corridor fast. But wait orders. If the robot shows up don’t open fire until——”
He broke off abruptly, having overshot the usefulness of the mike without realizing it. He was at the Com Room door and his own voice was crackling at him out of a box hanging low in the greenish gloom over the communications officer’s chair about ten feet away.
He let the door swing behind him and was engulfed in noise and darkness. The big glass information panels and the coloured circles of the com screens glowed bright and the faces of the men swam dimly in the gloom, highlights picked out on their cheekbones and foreheads in gold and red, green and faint blue reflected from the instruments they tended. General Conway automatically flashed a tired glance around the boards and screens that told him what was happening on the entire Pacific Front. He saw the radar shadows of the fleet, checked the code board for wind and weather, the status panel for plane assignments. But the information meant nothing. His brain refused to accept the burden. He had only one problem now.
“Where’s the robot?” he asked. He had to shout to make himself heard, because to the normal noise of the room with its complex of relayed voices was now added a crashing uproar Conway failed to identify for a moment.
The communications officer nodded towards a bluish television screen at his left, part of a long row. Small and bright upon it a doll-sized robot could be seen, raging through a doll-sized storeroom. But the noise it made was life-size. It seemed to be hunting for something, and its method was frantic. It didn’t open drawers—it ripped the whole side off cabinets and swept the contents out with great, rhythmic, scything motions, sending them spinning through the air. Now and then the bright cone of its glance would swerve to follow the fall of some object briefly, and twice the robot paused to snatch up items and turn them tentatively over. But clearly, whatever it wanted was not here. And as clearly, it operated on true egoism—whatever it found useless it destroyed furiously. It had no referent but its own immediate need.
“And maybe he’s right,” Conway thought. “Maybe if we can’t get him whatever he needs nothing down here is worth keeping.”
Behind him he heard Broome and the communications officer conferring in strained voices above the tumult.
“I don’t know,” the officer was shouting. “It tore up the library so fast we couldn’t tell what it had read and what it hadn’t. You see how it’s going now. It moves so fast——”
Broome leaned over the communications officer’s shoulder and punched the two-way button on the intercom for Sub-Seventeen where the robot was raging.
“Ego,” he said into the mike. “Do you hear me?”
The robot ripped down the side of the last cabinet, swept its contents out in a rhythmic shower. Amplified over the screen they heard Broome’s voice echo back to them from the tiny greenish storeroom on the wall. The robot paused very briefly. Then it stood up straight, turned around once in a very rapid circuit that swept its cone of light across the walls.
“Want—” its hollow voice howled, and instantly shut itself off into silence again. It crashed its hands together like something in the last extremity of desperation, and then walked straight for the wall at the corner of the room.
The wall bent, cracked and opened. The robot stalked through and out of sight.
It seemed to Conway that every face in the room swung around towards his, pale ovals glistening with drops of gold and red and greenish sweat in the darkness. It was up to him now. They waited for instructions.
He wanted to lash out as the robot had lashed, tear these floating luminous screens down and smash the glowing panels with them, silence the yammering voices from the walls. Responsibilities he could not handle buzzed like hot bees around his head. It was too much, too much. A deep wave of exhaustion washed over him, followed by a wave of hysterical exhilaration, both so ghostly and so far away they hardly seemed to touch Conway at all. He was somebody else entirely, infinite distances off, with ghostly problems that had no relation to the vacuum of the here and now.
“General?” Broome’s voice said. “General?”
Conway coughed. “The robot,” he said briskly. “We’ve got to stop him. You plotting his course so far, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Screen Twelve.”
Twelve was one of the hanging panels, transparent in the dark, a net of luminous gold lines on it marking the corridors, with the sectors showing in dim blue numerals. “The red dots are the robot, sir,” the sergeant told him.
They watched a disembodied hand float forward from behind the screen and add fluorescent grease-dots to the lengthening red line which had started in Broome’s lab, crossed the library and storeroom and gone out by the solid wall. They, stalked now across the next three sectors, wading through, the walls as they went in an elongating luminous chain of red.
Their goal was obvious to everyone. About seven inches ahead in the heart of the map lay a round room with bright green squares glowing around its walls. They all knew what the green squares were. They all knew how intimately their own survival hinged upon the blizzard of electronic impulses storming through those incredibly complex calculations in the computers.
Every mind in the room clicked over like the computers themselves, considering what would happen when the robot reached that room.
“The supersonics are coming up from level six, sir. About five minutes for them. The HD robots should intersect in about three minutes. You can see them in—what is it? purple?—on the plot panel.”
A slow line of purple dots was moving inward down a gold-lined corridor from the periphery of the chart.
“Too slow,” Conway said, watching the red dots which marked the footsteps of the thinking robot. Or was it thinking, now? “Anybody know if those walls between are plaster or stone?” There was a silence. Nobody did. But as they watched, the red dots paused at a gold line, rebounded twice, reversed themselves and made for a break in the line that indicated a door.
“Stone,” Conway said. “That one, anyhow. I hope he didn’t jar anything loose trying.”
“Maybe we’d better hope he did,” Broome said.
Conway looked at the old man. “I’m going to stop him,” he said. “Understand? We’re not going to junk Ego. We need him too badly. I’m sorry we weren’t better prepared to handle him, but I’d do it again if I had to. We can’t wait.”
“He’s moving fast, sir,” the communications officer said.
Conway looked at the screen. He bit his lip painfully and then said, “Volunteers. I want somebody to jump in there and delay him. I don’t care how. Trip him. Wave a red rag in his face. Anything to gain time. Every second counts. All right, corporal. Lieutenant, that’s two.”
“We can’t spare any more from here,” the communications officer said.
“All right, on your way,” Conway snapped. “Get him on the screens, sergeant.”
Three round television screens clicked into bluish life, showing a trail of wrecked desks and smashed equipment. In the third screen Ego, looking very small and remote and innocent, was smashing himself head-on against a too-narrow door. On the last smash the door-frame gave way and Ego surged through and stalked off down the tiny, diminishing corridor beyond. On the plot board the red dots showed him only about five inches away from the calculator room.