by C. L. Moore
“But what do you want with the calculators?” Broome was murmuring as he stared after the vanishing figure on the screen. He tapped irritatingly with his nails on the metal table. “Maybe,” he said, and paused. He looked up at Conway. “I’m no good here, General. I’m going to the calculator room. I have some ideas, but the analogue computer thinks a lot faster than I do. Ego moves too fast. It may take machines to figure out machines. Anyhow, I’ll try.”
“Go on, go on then,” Conway said. ̴You’ve got between five and ten minutes. After that——” He didn’t finish, but in his mind he said, “—I can rest. One way or the other, I can rest.”
The communications officer had been clicking television screens on and off, hunting. Now he said, “Look, sir! The volunteer team—God, he’s tall!” The observation was spontaneous; until now the communications room hadn’t seen Ego alongside human figures.
Ego was a stalking giant in a dimly lit corridor on the screen. The volunteers had just burst out of a corridor door ten paces ahead of him, and he towered mightily over them. You could see their tiny, scared faces no bigger than peas turned up towards the oblivious, striding giant as he followed the searchlight splash of his single eye down the hall.
The two men must have moved at a dead run from here to there. They hadn’t had time to pick and choose, and their instructions had been ambiguous, but somewhere on the way they had snatched up a stout steel beam which now showed like a bright thread across the corridor. One man darted across the hall just ahead of the robot, and the two of them braced the beam shoulder high from opposite doorways, making a barrier across the path.
The robot didn’t even glance at the obstacle. He struck the beam squarely, the clang echoing through the corridor and reverberating from the screen into the communications room. Ego bounced a little, recovered his balance, measured the situation and then stooped to pass under the bar. Hastily the two men lowered their burden. Again a clang and a recoil, and this time the bar bent into a deep V at the point of impact. Over the screen they heard one of the men yell as the end of the bar caught him. Ego heaved upward with both kinds, stepped under the bar and stalked off down the hall.
“Thirty seconds saved,” Conway said bitterly. “And one man down. Where are the HDs now?”
“About a minute and a half away, sir, Coming along corridor eight. They ought to intersect just outside the calculator room door. See, on the board?”
Slowly and heavily, it seemed to Conway, the purple dots moved against the darkness, ploddingly. A floating hand materialized and added two more red dots to the chain of Ego’s footsteps moving towards the heart of the citadel. The red dots were ahead. They were going to outstrip the purple.
“I’m going to fail,” Conway said to himself. He thought of all the human lives here underground, wholly dependent upon him, and all the lives outside, confident that the Pacific Front was in good bands. He wondered what the commanding general on the other side was doing now, and what he would do if he knew. …
“Look, sir,” the communications officer said.
There was still one man of the volunteer team left on his feet. He hadn’t given up yet. Ego’s last heave had apparently snapped the steel bar off short at the V, leaving one end like a bent club. It must have been very heavy, but the man in the corridor was operating on a drive too intense to notice the weight. Clu on shoulder, he was sprinting after Ego down the hall.
They saw him lessen the distance between them. They saw him at the robot’s heels. Distantly they heard him shout.
“Ego!” he called, as he had heard Broome call the name. And in answer, as the robot had answered before, Ego paused, turned, bathed the man in the cold one-eyed beam of its searchlight.
“Want—” the strangled, metallic voice said hollowly, and stopped.
The man with the club jumped high and smashed for the single bright eye in the robot’s forehead.
“Is it safe?” Conway asked. “Will he hurt him, Broome?” But he got no answer. Broome had disappeared.
On the screen the robot struck upward furiously with both hands, parrying the club just in time. The crash of impact made the screen shiver. The man had time and strength for one more swing, and this time at the height of its arc Ego seized the club and plucked it almost casually out of the man’s hands. Over his enormous steel shoulder he sent it clanging down the corridor behind him.
Conway glanced quickly at the chart. The purple dots were gaining. The red dot at the end of Ego’s chain wavered left and right as Ego dodged the two blows of the club. Conway looked back at the screen.
The disarmed man hesitated only briefly. Then he gathered himself and sprang straight up towards the blank steel face with its single eye. By some miracle he passed between the closing arms and locked his own arms around the steel neck. His body blinded the torch-like lens of the robot’s eye, and he clung desperately, legs and arms clenched around the lurching steel tower of Ego’s body.
From the darkness beyond their struggling figures a heavy, rhythmic thudding began to be heard, making the television screen vibrate a little.
“The heavy-duties,” Conway breathed. He glanced again at the chart, not needing it to see the line of purple dots almost at the corridor intersection now, and the red dot of Ego wavering erratically.
The robot didn’t depend on vision alone. You could tell that by his motion. But the clinging man disturbed him. The heaving weight pulled him off balance. Ego plucked futilely at the man for an instant, staggering thirty degrees off course towards the left-hand wall. Then the steel hands got a grip on the clinging man, and the robot ripped him away easily and smoothly, with a gesture like tearing a shirt off his chest, and flung him with casual force against the wall.
Beyond Ego, at the far end of the corridor, you could see the tall double doors of the calculator room. Ego stood for a moment as if he were collecting himself. The screen seemed to be wavering, and Conway made a futile, steadying motion towards it. The vibration was so strong now that vision blurred upon it.
“What’s the matter?” Cnway asked irritably. “Is it out of focus, or——”
“Look, sir,” the communications officer said. “Here they come.”
Like a walking wall the heavy robots wheeled out of the darkness at the edge of the screen, their ponderous tread making the whole scene shudder. Heavily they ground to a halt facing Ego, and stood there shoulder to shoulder across the corridor, their backs to the calculator doors.
Ego stood for a moment quite still, but shivering all over, his single eye sweeping from left to right and back again over them, infinitely fast. Something about these units of his own kind seemed to kindle a new and compelling drive, and Ego gathered himself together and lowered his shoulders and head a little, and surged forward as if eager for battle. The HDs, locked together in an unswerving row, braced themselves and stood firm.
The crash made every screen in the communications room flicker in distant sympathy. Sparks sprang out and steel plates groaned. Ego hung for an instant motionless upon the steel wall that opposed him, then fell back, staggered, braced himself to crash again.
But he did not charge. He stood there sweeping his bright scanner over the line, and the clicking in his chest rose and fell so loudly the listeners in the communications room could hear it plainly. A storm of alternate choices seemed to be pouring through the electronic mind of the thinker.
While Ego hesitated, the steel wall he confronted moved, curving outward at both ends towards the solitary figure. It was clear what the intention of the operators was. If these ponderous shapes could be made to close Ego in they could immobilize him by sheer massiveness, like tame elephants immobilizing a wild one.
But Ego saw the trap in the instant before the line began to move. His backward step and quick spin showed it. Conway thought his eye flashed brighter, and his whirl was incongruously light-footed. In contrast to the heavy-duty machines he looked like a steel dancer in his light, keen balance. He made a quick feint towar
ds one end of the line, and the robots massed sluggishly together to receive him. They opened a gap in their line when they moved, and Ego darted for the gap. But instead of passing through it he put out both arms and pushed delicately and fiercely at the two sides of the opening, in exactly the right spots. The two robots leaned ponderously outward, tipped just barely off their balance. They leaned, leaned, inexorably leaned and fell. Each carried its next companion down with it. The corridor thundered with the crash.
Trampling on the fallen machines, the line closed up arid moved ponderously forward. Ego ran at it with a clear illusion of joyous motion, stooped, struck two robots at once with the same delicate, exact precision, knowing before he struck at just what hidden fulcrum point their balance rested. The corridor thundered again with the tumult of their collapse. As the line tried to close once more over the fallen warriors Ego’s hands shot out and helped them heavily together, smashing two more into one another with unexpected momentum. This time as he touched them his touches were sharp blows, and the steel plating buckled in like tin.
In ss than two minutes the walking wall was a mass of staggering leviathans, half of them out of commission, the rest stumbling ponderously over their fallen comrades trying to reform a line already too short to work.
So much for that try, Conway thought. Then the supersonics were their last hope. There wouldn’t be time for more. Maybe there wasn’t even time for that.
“Where’s the supersonic squad?” he asked, impressed at the false briskness of his own voice. The communications officer looked up at the luminous chart.
“Almost there, General. Half a minute away.”
Conway glanced once at the television screen, which now showed Ego standing over the prostrate metal giants and swaying rather oddly as he looked down. It wasn’t like his behaviour pattern to hesitate like this. There seemed to be something on his mind. Whatever it was, it might mean a few moments’ leeway.
“I’m going out there myself, sergeant,” Conway said. “I—I want to be on the spot when——” He paused, realizing that he was saying aloud what was really a private soliloquy, Conway to Conway, with no eavesdroppers. What he meant was that he wanted to be there when the end came—one way or the other He had envied the robot, he had hoped infinite things for it. He had begun to identify with the powerful and tireless steel. Win or lose, he wanted to be on the spot at the payoff.
Running down the corridor was like running in a dream, floating, almost, his legs numb and the sound of his footfalls echoing from feathery distances. Each time his weight jolted down he wondered if that knee could take it, whether it wouldn’t fold and let him fall, let him lie there and rest. … But no, he wanted to stand beside Ego and see the steel face and hear the mindless voice when they destroyed the robot, or the robot destroyed them all. The third chance—success—seemed too remote to consider.
When he got there he hardly knew it. He was dimly aware that he had stopped running, so there must be a reason. He was standing with his hand on a doorknob, his back leaning against the panels, gasping for breath. To the left stretched the narrow corridor down which he had run. Before him the broad hall loomed where men had fought Ego and failed, and machines had fought him and now lay almost still, or staggered futilely, out of control.
No matter how clearly you see a scene on television screens, you never really experience it until you get there. Conway had forgotten, in this brief while, how tall Ego really was. There was a smell of machine oil and not metal in the air, and dust motes danced in the cone of Ego’s searchlight as he stooped over the fallen robots. He was about to do something. Conway couldn’t guess what.
Running footsteps and the clank of equipment sounded down the corridor to the left. Conway turned his head a little and saw the supersonic squad pounding towards him. He thought, maybe there’s still a chance. If Ego delays another two minutes. …
On the floor the fallen robots still twitched and stirred in response tothe distant commands of their operators. But a heavy-duty robot, fallen, isn’t easy to set upright again. Ego stooped over the nearest, seeming almost puzzled.
Then with sudden, rather horrifying violence, he reached out and ripped the front plate off his victim with one rending motion. His gaze plunged shining into the entrails of the thing, glancing in bright reflections off the tubes and the wiring so coarse in comparison with his own transistors and printed circuits. He put out a steel hand, sank his fingers deep and ripped again, gazing, engrossed, at the havoc he made. There was something frightful about this act of murder, one robot deliberately disembowelling another on his own initiative, with what seemed the coolest scientific interest.
But whatever Ego sought wasn’t there. He straightened and went on to the next, ripped, stooped, studied the ticking and flashing entrails intently, his own inward ticking quite loud as if he were muttering to himself.
Conway, beckoning the supersonic squad on, thought to himself, “In the old days they used to tell fortunes that way. Maybe he’s doing it now. …” And once more the chilly thought swam up to the surface of his consciousness that perhaps he knew what drove the robot to desperation. Perhaps he too knew the future, and the knowledge and the pressure made the two of them kin. Win the war was what Ego’s ticking entrails commanded, just as the more complex neurons of Conway’s brain commanded him. But what if winning was impossible, and Ego knew. …
The supersonic squad, running hard, burst out of the side corridor and pulled up short at their first sight of Ego in the—no, not flesh. In the shining steel, giant-tall, with the cyclops eye glaring. The sergeant panted something at Conway, trying to salute, forgetting that both his hands were full of equipment.
Conway with his pointing finger drew a semicircle in front of him before the calculator room door.
“Set the guns up, quick—along here. We’ve got to stop him if he tries to get in.”
Ego straightened from his second victim and moved on to a third, hesitating over it, looking down.
The squad had, after all, only about thirty seconds to spare. They had been assembling their equipment as they ran, and now with speed as precise as machinery they took up positions along the line Conway had assigned them. He stood against the door, looking down at their stooping backs as they drew up the last line of defence with their own bodies and their guns between Ego and the calculators. Or no, Conway thought, maybe I’m the last line. For some remote and despairing thought was shaping itself in his mind as he looked at Ego.
In exactly the same second that the first ultrasonic gun swung its snout towards the corridor, Ego straightened and faced the double doors and the circle of men kneeling behind their guns. It seemed to Conway that over their heads he and Ego looked at each other challengingly for a moment.
“Sergeant,” Conway said in a tense voice. “Cut him off at the leg, halfway to the knee. And pinpointup, em>fine. He’s full of precision stuff and he’s worth a lot more than you or me.”
Ego bathed them in his cold headlight beam. Conway, wondering if the robot had understood, said quickly, “Fire.”
You could hear the faintest possible hissing, nothing more. But a spot of heat glowed cherry-red and then blinding white upon Ego’s left leg just below the knee.
Conway thought, “It’s hopeless. If he charges us now he’ll break through before we can——”
But Ego had another defence. The searchlight glance blinked once, and then Conway felt a sudden, violent discomfort he couldn’t place, and the heat-spot went red again and faded. The sergeant dropped the gun nozzle and swore, shaking his hand.
“Fire on six,” he said. “Eight, stand by.”
Ego stood motionless, and the discomfort Conway felt deepened in rhythm with a subtle, visible vibration that pulsed through the steel tower before him.
A second sonic gun hissed faintly. A spot of red sprang out on the robot’s leg. The vibration deepened, the discomfort grew worse. The heat-spot faded to nothing.
“Interference, sir,” the s
ergeant said. “He’s blanketing the sound-wave with a frequency of his own—something he’s giving out himself. Feel it?”
“But why doesn’t he charge?” Conway asked himself, not aloud, for fear the robot could really understand. And he thought, maybe he can’t charge and broadcast the protecting frequency at the same time. Or maybe he hasn’t thought yet that he could wade right through before we could hurt him much. And Conway tried to picture to himself the world as it must look to Ego, less than an hour old, with impossible conflicts raging in the electronic complexities of his chest.
Conway said, “The eight-gun’s on another frequency? Keep trying, sergeant. Maybe he can’t blanket them all at once. Hold out as long as you can.”
He opened the door behind him quickly and softly and went into the computer room.
This was another world. For a moment he forgot everything that lay outside the double doors and stood there taking in the feel and smell and sight of the room. It was a good place. He had always liked to be here. He could forget what stood eight feet tall and poised for destruction outside the door, and what lay waiting in the future, no farther away than day after tomorrow. He looked up at the high, flat faces of the computers, liking the way the lights winked, the sound of tape feeding through drums, the steady, pouring sound of typewriter keys, the orderly, dedicated feel of the place.
Broome looked up from the group around the typewriter of the analogue computer. All the men in the room had left their jobs and were clustering here, where the broad tape flowed out from under the keys and the columns of print poured smoothly, like water, on to the paper.
“Anything?” Conway asked.
Broome straightened painfully, easing his back.
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell me,” Conway said. “Quick. He’ll be here in seconds.”
“He’s set up a block, accidentally. That’s pretty sure. But how and why we still don’t——”
“Then you don’t know anything,” Conway said flatly. “Well, I think I may have a——”