Sir MacHinery

by Tom McGowen

  WEEKLY READER CHILDREN’S BOOK CLUB PRESENTS

  Text copyright © 1970 by Tom E. McGowen. Illustration copyright © 1970 by Follett Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America.

  ISBN 0-695-40167-X Titan binding

  ISBN 0-695-80167-8 Trade binding

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-118965

  Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club Edition

  To my son,

  ALAN,

  who taught me the true meaning of science,

  and to my daughter,

  GAYLE,

  who shares my fondness for fantasy.

  Chapter

  1

  In the northern part of Scotland, past the valley that is known as the Great Glen, the land sweeps away toward the sea in wild and wonderful desolation. Here are the oldest mountains in Europe—grim, gray, towering cliffs, crags, and crannies with names such as Canisp, Suilven, and Stac Polly. On their slopes, twisted trees lean against the wind, and great clumps of gorse bush shudder at the onslaught of the gales that rush down from the Arctic Circle. In the few flat places are patches of forest where black green pine trees have grown uncut and unvisited for a thousand years and more. For the people in this region are few, and few they have been since the very beginning of things.

  All of Scotland is well steeped in legend, but this bit of land is thick with strange tales. Here, it is said, is the abode of the wee, dark people, and of the green men and the seal folk, as well as of brownies and animals most strange to see. There are glades in the woods on the mountainsides where the devil himself comes to dance with witches on All Hallow’s E’en. There are rings of black boulders called cromlechs, and piles of black stones called cairns, and it is wise to avoid both after sundown. Giants walk in these parts, too, and their huge footprints have been seen in patches of snow by many sober and serious men. There are any number of old and ruined abbeys, castles, and cottages filled with ghosts, moanings, groanings, and clanking of chains.

  Probably the least haunted and most modern of all the castles in the area was the one which squatted at the top of a small hill called Auld Clootie, which rose above the tiny village of Strathgow. The castle had been built in the sixteenth century and was the ancestral home of the Earls of Strathgow, who had lived in it until well into modern times. But earls, like kings, dukes and noblemen of all ranks, had gone out of fashion by the early days of the twentieth century, and most of them had to give up their old castles and manor houses to go out into the world to find jobs. The last Earl of Strathgow had left Scotland in 1936, and the castle had stood deserted, and presumably haunted, ever since. Until the strange American millionaire rented it.

  He wasn’t really a millionaire but he was an American, and to the people of Strathgow that was the same thing. He came bumping up the old road into town in an American automobile that was the biggest car ever seen in that part of Scotland. The seats and trunk of the car were filled with boxes marked FRAGILE and MACHINERY. He stopped the first villager he happened to encounter, Mr. Darling, the tavern keeper, and asked the whereabouts of the chief of police. Mr. Darling and the large crowd which had collected finally decided that he meant the chief constable, so they took him to the home of Jock Wier, the town constable and sole law officer. The American introduced himself as Simon Smith and showed Constable Wier some papers which proved that he had rented Strathgow castle and was entitled to live in it. Then he drove on up the old cart road that wound to the top of Auld Clootie.

  In the following weeks, trucks from such far-off places as Glasgow and Edinburgh drove into the town and up to the castle. Like Simon Smith’s automobile, these trucks were piled high with large and small wooden boxes, through the slats of which the peering villagers could see gleams of glass and glints of metal. And the people of Strathgow began to wonder what all these boxes of machinery might be for, and why a rich American would want to seclude himself in an old, uncomfortable, presumably haunted castle. In a village where practically nothing exciting ever happened, this became a mammoth mystery.

  It was the chief topic of conversation among the men who met at Mr. Darling’s pub each evening. Hunched over tankards of beer, they frowned in concentration, trying to arrive at a logical but suitably interesting conclusion. Finally, Mr. Darling was able to shed some light on the matter. He told how a search for his lost dog had led him to the castle on a previous evening. Mr. Darling’s dog was twelve years old and never left his sleeping place beside the fire, but by silent, mutual consent, the listening men did not bring up this point. Thinking that the dog might have wandered into the castle, said Mr. Darling, but not wishing to disturb Mr. Smith, he had found a lighted window and peered into it. This had not been very easy, as the window was some ten feet above ground level and Mr. Darling had had to climb up a drainpipe to reach it. He had seen a large room, littered with open and empty wooden boxes. In the center of the room stood a massive table upon which lay a glittering apparatus, and over this Simon Smith had been hunched in feverish concentration. There had been no sign of the dog, Mr. Darling hastened to add.

  At this point, Mr. Edward Small, a retired Sergeant Major of a famous Scottish regiment spoke up. “I passed there the other night, too, and I heard a most curious noise. A buzzing like, it was.”

  The men considered these items of information thoughtfully. “Och, he must be a scientist,” Mr. McMurdoch the butcher announced with awe. “He’s inventing something up there.”

  “Tis a monster he’s making,” declared old Ritchie McMullin, who was fond of American horror movies. “You wait. It’ll be comin’ doon from the castle any night now, seven feet tall, wi’ a great, green face and a thirst for human blood!” He shivered happily and dunked his walruslike mustache into a tankard of ale.

  Actually, both Mr. McMurdoch and old Ritchie were pretty close to being right. Simon Smith was a physicist, which is one kind of scientist, and he was making a sort of monster. But it wasn’t seven feet tall with a great, green face—it was exactly three feet two inches tall and it was silver, all over. It was a robot.

  The dictionary says that a robot is “a machine in the form of a human being that performs the mechanical functions of a human being but lacks emotions and sensitivity.” But that is not the most complete explanation. Any number of machines designed to do various kinds of work could be put into manlike bodies, but they would not really be robots. A real robot would be a machine that could think just as a human being does. It would be a machine with a brain and the ability to act as the brain directed it—almost a live machine.

  And this was precisely what Simon Smith had made. The robot was little because Simon had wished to conserve on expensive materials, but was quite manlike in appearance, with a round head, body, arms and legs, and hands and feet. Inside the squat metal tube that served as the body was an incredibly complicated mechanism, the basis of which was a small, compact analytical computor.

  From this, a network of fine wires ran, like a nervous system, to all parts of the body. Tiny, twin television scanning lenses peeped out of the round head and sent images down to the computor memory bank. This brain evaluated the images and sent messages to the movable portions of the body, telling them what to do. All of this took less than a millionth of a second. On each side of the head were slotted grills behind which were sensitive microphones serving as ears. And on the front of the globe, below the eye lenses was another grill with a miniature radio speaker connected to the device through which the robot could talk.

  The little robot was the result of many years of hard work by Simon Smith, who had come to northern Scotland to find complete privacy for the final st
ages of its construction. And it so happened, on that very night while Mr. Darling, Old Richie, and the other men had been discussing Simon Smith and his mysterious doings, the robot’s construction was finished. The last solenoid circuit had been wired in, the last screw tightened, and the last seam soldered. The robot was ready to be brought to life

  Simon Smith was most excited. He brought the robot into what had once been the main dining hall of the castle, a huge, high-ceilinged room with a single great window. The centuries-old table and chairs still stood in the center of the room. Dragging one of the chairs away from the table, Simon set the robot carefully upon it. He gazed fondly at his wonderful creation and dreamed of the fame and fortune that would be his when he had tested his model robot and could offer it to the world.

  “Gosh, I’m tired,” he exclaimed, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “I’ve been working so hard to get you finished that I haven’t been to bed for almost forty-eight hours.” He yawned again. “I’d love to start those tests right now, but I just don’t think I can stay awake a minute more. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and when I’m fresh again, I’ll give you a good workout.”

  Shuffing about the huge room he blew out the tall, thick candles, which were his only source of light in the old castle. Then he returned to the table and picked up the massive, pewter candelabra. Holding this high, he let the yellow radiance flicker upon the robot’s gleaming body. Then, with another jaw-stretching yawn, he turned and trudged to the door at the far end of the room. It squeaked shrilly as he opened it, squeaked again as it thudded shut behind him. And with the second squeak, the room plunged into inky darkness.

  Time passed. The full moon rose in the night sky, and a thin shaft of silver light spilled its soft brilliance over the small metal shape. But then there was a sound. Off in one dark corner there was a faint pattering upon the flagstone floor. Into the flood of moonlight, trotted three tiny men, each no more than twelve inches tall. Ranging themselves in a row in front of the old, carved chair, they stared solemnly up at the silent, shining figure of the small robot.

  Chapter

  2

  For almost a full minute they stood, silently staring up at the seated figure. Despite their tiny size, they were perfectly formed and proportioned—although perhaps a trifle chubby about their middles. Their chins were bearded, and they wore short, brown cloaks with tall, pointed hoods and doublets. Each of them wore a tiny kilt, the plaid of which was worked out in shades of brown and green. Their feet were shod in high boots of soft, brown leather.

  At last one of them broke the silence. “Och, he doesna look verra big,” he observed in a hoarse whisper.

  The tallest of the three, whose sandy-red beard was heavily streaked with gray, shook his head impatiently. “It canna be helped,” he whispered sharply. “He’s the only knight that’s been seen in these parts for hundreds o’ years.”

  “How do ye know he’s a knight?” wondered the third little man.

  “Because he’s wearing shining armor, you ninny,” he hissed. “That’s how knights look. They wear metal overall their body to protect them in battle. My grandsire told me of this. Knights were common in his time.”

  The other little man had tiptoed over to one of the boxes littering the room, which had contained apparatus for the robot’s interior. Simon Smith had ripped away several of the wooden slats, but on one of those remaining the word MACHINERY was stenciled in bold, black letters. “What does that say, Angus?” called the little man.

  The gray-bearded one approached the box. “Like as not ‘tis his name,” he whispered. Squinting, he brought his eyes close to the letters, and his lips worked silently as he painfully spelled out the word. Old Angus, who was an uncertain speller at best, got off on the wrong foot. “Mac—Hinn—eree,” he read, slowly. “Aye, that’s it—MacHinery. It’s a good Scottish name, though I’m not familiar wi’ the clan.”

  They all turned back to the robot. “Still asleep,” old Angus commented. “Ye’ve the strongest lungs, Gowrie, give him a yell.”

  Gowrie put his hands up beside his mouth and shouted, “Waken, Sir MacHinery!” The robot, of course, did not stir.

  “Och, he’s a sound sleeper,” Angus said. “Come on lads, let’s all call together.” They did so, with no better result.

  “Perchance he canna hear us through that steel pot he’s wearing,” Gowrie suggested. “Pound his shins, Angus.”

  “That’ll but bruise my knuckles and perchance make him angry,” growled Angus. “I think there’s naught for it but to climb up where we can open his visor and yell in his ear. Let’s be at it.”

  The other two clasped their hands together to form a sort of platform and with a heave, they lifted Angus to where he could grasp the arm of the chair. “Fwooshed if I know why he sleeps wi’ his armor on anyway.” he grumbled, pulling himself up.

  “Perchance he’s afeared of the crazy foreigner that’s livin’ in the castle,” called Gowrie in a loud whisper.

  “Ah, there’s naught to be afeared of from him,” replied Angus. He was standing on the chair arm now, and leaning forward with one hand on the robot’s shoulder. “The foreigner is a colonial and they be a queer lot, but they’re not dangerous. Now if I can find out how this helmet comes apart . . .” He groped with his hand on the robot’s head and by pure chance came down upon the very button that would activate the robot, and pressed it.

  The ear microphone on the left side of his head picked up a faint noise, and his round head with its twin lens eyes automatically swiveled about.

  Although a newborn babe is quite weak and helpless, both physically and mentally, quite the opposite was true of the small robot. His memory bank contained as many facts, figures, and bits of information as a well-stocked library. Furthermore, he knew exactly what he was and how he had come to be. His infrared sensitive eyes could see as well in the dark as in the brightest daylight. And when they opened up upon the gray, stony wall of the castle, the robot knew exactly what kind of stone it was, how long it had been quarried, and the chemical composition of the mortar that held it together.

  When he saw a twelve-inch tall man standing upon the chair arm, near his elbow, his computor flashed the impression of a man standing far enough away so as to appear small. But it instantly canceled this out as illogical because the figure was standing upon the arm of a hair and replaced it with the impression of a miniature human being. Since the tapes that Simon Smith had fed into the robot’s computor had not included any information about brownies, the robot regarded the small figure as being a child. He was programmed to treat children with extreme gentleness and to look after their well-being.

  “Good evening, my little man,” said his vocal apparatus, fed by electronic impulse suggestions from a fifty-thousand word vocabulary section of memory bank. “Is it not well past your bedtime?” His voice, reproduced mechanically, was a flat monotone.

  Old Angus was a bit taken aback by both the words and the sound of the voice. His people, the brownies, had not revealed themselves to a human being in several hundred years, and he had fully expected anything from a stunned silence to a shout of surprise. He was really rather crestfallen at the robot’s matter-of-fact attitude.

  “Aye, it is a bit late, Sir MacHinery,” he acknowledged, “but we have verra important matters to talk of with ye, which is why we’ve waked ye up. There’s great trouble coming to the world and ye must help to fight it!”

  The robot was silent for a time. His computor brain was sorting out and analyzing the information it had just received. Not having been programmed to deal with brownies seeking help to avert doom, it found itself with too many missing factors for proper analysis.

  “I require further information,” intoned the robot.

  Now it was the brownie’s turn to be silent while his brain analyzed the remarks of this strange sounding, small knight. “Ah,” he exclaimed at last. “Ye mean ye dinna understand! I’ll explain.” He sat down on the arm of the chair, his legs dangling. The
robot tilted it’s head so that the eye lenses continued to stare down at him.

  “I don’t know much aboot the outside world these days, Sir MacHinery,” he began, “but I’ve heard that mortal men ha’ forgotten the old ways and if that be so, I’d best tell ye a few things.

  “A very long time ago, when the world was filled with great open places, all the folk of the world lived together in friendship. There were the tribes of men who farmed the fields and hunted. There were the dwarves who lived in the caverns below the earth and loved to make beautiful things from the very rocks of earth. There were the elves who delighted in the cool, green shadows of the forests and who lived in the thickest groves of the deepest woods. And there were my people, the brownies, who were wanderers, going where they pleased and earning their food by performing tasks for others.

  “Och, those were the days of bright, open sky and broad, open plains; of great, proud forests, and mountains that stretched up to touch the clouds. There was no smoke clotting the air then, and the streams that tumbled down from the high places and rushed, laughing through the glades were clean and silver and sparkling! Those were days when a man or an elf or a brownie could walk under the sweeping sky with the golden grass tassels swishing about his legs and the soft wind at his back and shout in a great voice for the very joy of being alive.

  “It was a time of great magic, too. There was magic in rocks, trees, air, earth, water, and fire, for those who cared to seek it out. Most did not, but some did. And that was how the trouble began. For as any creature who lives upon this world well knows, where there is love of life and love of the good power that gives life, great evil will always grow and try to become master.

  “For then, a dwarf from one of the greatest of all the dwarf tribes, who sought more and more knowledge of magic, came at last upon that great, hungering power of evil that exists to enslave souls, and delights in grief and the spoiling of beauty. The dwarf-sorcerer was ensnared by that power and he in turn ensnared others, until that great tribe of dwarves became possessed by the desire to conquer and enslave and rule. They grew proud and arrogant and cruel. Their once pleasant faces twisted into snarling masks, and their once stalwart bodies blackened and shriveled. They became what all the world called them then and since—demons.