“Come away from the window, please,” Wilma said. Although her words were couched as a request, their tone made it clear that she spoke a command. She pointed peremptorily to a button beneath the clear panel and Buck obediently pressed it. The window went dark.
“Look,” he said, returning to his seat beside Wilma. “I think I deserve some kind of explanation. Where are we, really? I don’t even know what planet I’m on!”
“What you undoubtedly deserve is a firing squad,” Wilma answered sharply. “But we don’t have those anymore. We have a better fate awaiting you after your interrogation is completed.”
“And I thought Princess Ardala was all a nightmare,” Buck muttered bitterly.
“Princess Ardala!” Wilma jerked at the name. “I’m sure you’d like me to believe that she sent you. Well, it may interest you to know that whoever really did send you here planted a bomb on your ship. It was to be triggered by the earth’s atmosphere entering your ship when you opened the hatch after you landed.”
“A bomb?”
“Had we not moved your ship directly into a decontamination chamber to remove alien microbes, we would not have discovered the charge. And you, pilot, would be dead!”
Buck took a minute to assimilate this latest blockbuster. Not only was he no nearer to an understanding of what was taking place around him—each new revelation only seemed to move him farther away from one! He shook his head and stared introspectively into the darkened window-panel. “If this is all a nightmare… then I can only say that it’s a beaut!”
THREE
A sterile room, gleaming white from floor to ceiling, from wall to wall. Light glared down from every direction. The room was furnished with the most spartan of implements. Two hard chairs. One small table. A single panel barely distinguishable from the sterile glaring walls that surrounded it.
And one living occupant.
William Rogers, Captain, United States Air Force.
Buck sat in one of the two chairs, gazing morosely at the white panel, wondering, wondering who or what might come through it—and when!
He stood up, moved away from his chair, strode nervously around the room chewing his lower lip, smacking the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. Finally he went to the white panel and tried to press it open. It did not respond.
Instead, an even more inconspicuous panel slid aside, at the opposite end of the room, and a man passed through it to stand staring at Buck from the rear. The newcomer was built along the delicate lines of a person who has lived long and grown far from the fleshly existence of youth or even middle age. His hair was a gray that was heavily salted with white. His features were thin, ascetic, almost spiritual in appearance. Yet a keenness of intellect so marked his features that no one would ever have mistaken him for less than the genius he was!
“Doctor Huer is my name,” the newcomer announced. “I am very pleased to meet you, Captain Rogers.”
Buck spun on one heel, faced the other in readiness to make any move necessary. “What in hell is going on here? Where am I and what are you doing to me?”
“We’re studying you,” Huer announced as calmly and matter-of-factly as if he were an adult answering the simple question of a small child.
Buck swung around, glaring at the walls and the ceiling of the sterile chamber.
“It’s all electronic and quite painless,” the old man told him. His voice was thin, his tone a strange combination of gentleness and abrasiveness, as if he had seen all that the world had to show, and had reached a point of tolerance toward human foibles, yielding only occasionally to impatience with the foolishness of the mortal beings.
“So far,” Huer continued, “we’re quite as astonished as you are, Captain, by what has happened. Your testing has provided the most phenomenal data!”
“All right, get to it,” Buck snapped impatiently. “What’s happened to me? If I’m dead, I obviously didn’t make it to heaven. So just what planet is this?”
“What planet?” Huer laughed. “Why, Earth, of course! You returned yesterday morning, just as your mission required and on almost the precise landing area originally programmed into your ship’s computer.”
Buck shook his head despairingly. “Doctor, I may have been through a lot but there’s no way you’re going to tell me that city out there is anything like Chicago.”
“No, it isn’t,” Huer conceded. “There’s nothing like Chicago left on Earth. At least, nothing like the Chicago you knew in the twentieth century.”
Buck stared speechlessly at the doctor.
“Captain,” Huer resumed, “we’re trying to find a way to ease you into what’s happened.”
Buck Rogers leaped from his chair and stood glaring at the tall scientist. “I was raised back in the 1960s, Doc. So don’t be afraid to shock me. I know what culture shock is! Just let me have the facts, man! Tell me the plain truth and you can spare us both a lot of time and trouble beating around the bush!”
“I’m afraid that even I am not permitted to tell you everything,” Huer replied. “For your own good, Captain, it’s been decided that the shock would be too great—despite what you’ve just told me. Your 1960s were a difficult period, were they? I confess that my specialty is not ancient history.”
“Never mind that. You say its been decided I can’t handle the truth, hey? Well, who decided that? I have a right to—”
“Please!” the tall, lean scientist broke in. “I am but a humble man of science. Allow me to bring in my administrator, Dr. Theopolis.”
“Aw, look, Doc,” Buck complained in annoyance.
Huer crossed the wall to the semiconcealed white panel. It opened silently at his approach and he spoke to someone outside the sterile chamber. “Would you please bring Dr. Theopolis in here?”
From the opened panel there emerged the most astonishing creature that Buck Rogers had ever laid eyes on. In his own time there had been stories of intelligent robots, more or less manlike machines built with elaborate control circuitry capable of duplicating—or at least simulating—human thought. The famous ones—Adam Link, Helen O’Loy, R. Daneel Olivaw, Mr. Atom, Jay Score—had won their place in the hearts of lovers of extravagant literature.
But when the time came for the building of that kind of creature, technology had taken a turn in a different direction. Instead of furnishing the ordinary household with a robot who would stand over a washtub by the hour, scrubbing dirty linens, the technologists had invented washing machines with their own controls to do the job. Later, instead of building humanlike robots and teaching them to fly airplanes, the technologists had invented autopilots and built them directly into the instrumentation of the planes. And so it had gone—the traditional, man-like robot of fancy and fiction from the Tin Woodsman onward, had been a scientific dead end, bypassed in the march of progress.
Or so it had been in Buck’s day.
But now, there trotted into the sterile chamber a being whose very presence and existence disproved this theory of science. For here was a robot, made more or less along the lines of the fanciful ideas of Buck’s own boyhood.
It was barely three feet tall, made in a humanlike but far from perfectly human form. It held its head at an angle and tottered around the room in a manner that brought Buck to the brink of laughter despite the desperate nature of his situation. For all that it was a thing of metal and glass, the robot reminded Buck of the caperings of a chimpanzee in the Chicago Zoo half a millennium before.
“What is it?” Buck asked Huer.
“Your drone,” the scientist replied. “His name is Twiki.”
“He’s my—what?” Buck was flabbergasted.
While the two men spoke, the robot went about its business, totally ignoring them. It crossed the sterile chamber, opened another door and tottered into the next room.
“For the duration of your debriefing and determination,” Dr. Huer said, “he will act as your personal aide.”
As Buck stood in gaping amazement, the drone t
ottered back into the sterile chamber and the door slid shut behind him. The robot was unchanged, but now he had an odd object hanging from a cable around his neck. The thing was not very large—smaller than a breadbox, Buck thought to himself, yet rather larger than a deck of playing cards.
It was clearly a highly sophisticated machine, with complex circuitry, controls and indicator fights that flashed continually, glowing brightly, dimming, flashing suddenly and then disappearing again. Yet—Buck wondered if it was his imagination at work or a real phenomenon he observed—the ever-changing pattern of lights bore an uncanny similarity to the features of a human face.
Then a voice came from the odd, boxlike object. It spoke not to Buck but to his scientist-companion, in a voice of astonishing richness, soft and benevolent, soothing and serene. Yet it was also a voice of absolute authority.
“Good morning, Doctor Theopolis,” Huer greeted the box. “It’s a lovely day.”
“Thank you,” the box replied. “I did my best today.”
Buck gaped in amazement as the gray-headed scientist and the flashing lighted box conducted a pleasant social conversation. The scientist turned toward Buck and introduced the newcomer.
“Dr. Theopolis is a member of our Computer Council and in addition to his other duties, he is personally responsible for all environmental controls here within the Inner City.”
The box said, “I’m introducing a pale hint of mauve into the sunset this evening. Not quite so deep as amethyst, but I’m trying for something more subtle, more of the texture of carefully roasted cinnamon.”
The box’s lights flashed with something that Buck Rogers had to identify as an expression of preening self-satisfaction.
“I do hope the Captain can watch it with us,” Dr. Theopolis continued. “It’s truly going to be lovely, and one does always strive to capture the approbation of a new audience.”
Buck stared at the box, then murmured to Dr. Huer, “I’d do some checking if I were you. Find out who’s programming that thing and maybe check him out a little.”
The box indicated that it had heard every syllable. “Captain Rogers, it is we of the Council who do the programming for the entire city. Kindly reserve your opinions for your own delectation. Now,” and the machine made a sound that can only be identified as clearing its throat, “shall we get down to cases?”
Dr. Huer rose and indicated that he was about to leave. “I shall offer you a little word of advice before I go, Captain Rogers. These drones, or quads as they are sometimes known, have been programmed by each other, over a span of many generations. We have been saved by them, in a sense. The mistakes that we made in areas like our environment have been entirely turned over to them.
“They averted what must have been certain doom for the earth, Captain. Little by little, they bring us back to where we will not have to depend entirely on other planets for food and water. A quad is not a human. But you can hurt their feelings—their circuitry and their programming include emotions. It is their sensitivity that separates them from mere machines.”
Huer stepped through the doorway. As he disappeared he called back to Buck, “I’ll see you in approximately sixteen hours.”
“Sixteen hours!” Buck leaped to his feet. “Sixteen hours! Wait a minute!”
He started after Dr. Huer, jumped back just in time to avoid being clobbered by the automatically closing panel. “If you think I’m going to sit here talking to a package of Christmas lights for sixteen hours—”
“Sit down, Captain,” the soothing voice of Dr. Theopolis came to Buck. “Now let’s try to be as pleasant to each other as we can, eh? Please don’t snap at me, and I shall try to be sympathetic to your plight. That’s a good fellow. Thank you.”
Buck stared at the box of flashing lights, dumbfounded.
Dr. Theopolis spoke to the quad from whose neck he hung. “Be a good drone, Twiki… and place me on the table where I can get a good look at the Captain. While Captain Rogers and I begin to get acquainted, perhaps you could offer him a bit of liquid refreshment.”
“I don’t need any refreshment!” Buck snapped.
“Of course you do,” the soothing voice rolled on. “You’re extremely dehydrated from your ordeal. Sit down, Buck—do you mind, may I call you Buck?”
While Buck stared, Twiki removed Dr. Theopolis from around his neck and placed him carefully on the table. The little robot marched mechanically through the sliding door.
“Well, now,” the box of lights said, “what an attractive man you are, Buck. My word, are those eyes of yours blue?”
Buck slid slowly back into his chair. He felt as if he’d been handed a live concussion grenade and asked to make friends with it. “Blue,” he murmured, “that’s right.”
“How truly rare blue eyes are these days,” Dr. Theopolis said.
“My mother had blue eyes,” Buck snapped back. “Look, can we blast right through this rainbow and get to it? I’ve been trying for twenty-four hours to find out where I am… who I am… who you are…. Can I please have some answers?”
“Certainly, Buck,” the box of lights replied. “That’s why I’m here. To answer your questions.”
“Great! Then let’s have it, the straight data!”
The lights flashed like a patient man nodding his head to calm an impatient adolescent. “First, you are Captain Buck Rogers. According to your ship’s chronometer you left Earth in 1987 on a mission of exploration—”
“That much I know,” Buck broke it. “Try telling me something I don’t already know!”
“Well, if preliminary data hold up, it appears you have returned to Earth five hundred and four years later, to be precise. Buck—you, we, all of us—are now in the twenty-fifth century.”
Buck stared at Theopolis, then turned to the drone Twiki who had returned and stood beside him with a glass in his metallic hand.
“I believe I will take that drink now, thanks. In fact, thanks very much!” He reached for the liquid and tilted back his head.
Elsewhere, in an efficiently furnished corridor, Dr. Huer was carrying on a consultation with Colonel Wilma Deering of the Intercept Squadron. They walked briskly along the corridor, almost trotting. Dr. Huer had just made a statement and Wilma Deering responded.
“I don’t believe a word of it!”
“I’m not easily duped,” Dr. Huer replied.
“It’s not my opinion of you,” the smartly uniformed officer said. “But my respect for those pirates who have been decimating my squadron. The pirates would do anything to prevent our completing a treaty with Draconia. Anything including planting a phony man-from-the-past on us, for heaven knows what purposes of espionage or sabotage.”
While Dr. Huer and Colonel Deering continued their conference, Buck Rogers continued his confrontation with Dr. Theopolis. Still later, while Buck rested from his ordeal, the others met. The setting was a sleek, modernistic office, comfortable yet efficient. Dr. Theopolis rested on a desk between Colonel Wilma Deering and the gray-headed scientist Huer.
“You are wrong, Wilma,” Theopolis’ smooth voice poured from the box, “Buck Rogers is not a pirate or a plant of the pirates.”
“It’s Colonel Deering, not Wilma, to you, if you please.” The officer was clearly not happy with the situation. “And I’ll rely,” she continued, “on the full Council’s judgment, not yours alone.”
“My dear,” the box replied, “I personally interrogated Captain Rogers. You can take my word for it. He’s a wonnnnnnnnnnnderful man, believe me!”
Wilma pursed her lips angrily. “I do believe you when you tell me you believe he’s a wonderful man. But then, you’re not being asked to risk the lives of our few surviving warriors on sneaky subterfuge.”
“He’s only one man,” Dr. Huer put in conciliatorily. “What could he possibly do to endanger our people?”
“He could attempt to discredit the treaty with Draconia!” Wilma snapped.
“But he has made no such attempt,” Theopolis said.
“He comes to us a very bewildered young man. Devastated by the loss of every loved one. To him, there is nothing left to save. He has already lost all.”
“I would like an opportunity to spend some time with the captain,” Wilma Deering said.
“If you’re hoping to find fault with his testimony, you’ll be wasting your time.”
“Saving earth cannot be a waste of time, despite my having to endure the captain’s company!”
“If Dr. Theopolis has no objections,” Huer said, “I certainly have none.”
“Then the captain belongs to me,” Wilma asserted triumphantly, “until I expose him!” She rose from her seat and left the room, trailing a military sense of order.
The box on the desk said, “I’ve not seen Colonel Deering so uncharacteristically emotional about anything before this.”
“About anything?” Huer echoed his mechanical colleague. “Or about anyone?”
* * *
On a downtown mall of the Inner City, golden elevators whisked silently up and down in transparent columns surrounding a central fountain of waters illuminated by dancing, colorful lights. Buildings and vehicles gleamed in a bright, pleasant light. Smartly dressed and happy citizens moved from place to place, stopping for a bit of refreshment, shopping, appreciating works of art that were carefully spaced around the plaza, or conducting any other business that they happened to have.
Far across the mall, dwarfed by the towering spire of levels of magnificent architecture, two figures strolled slowly, side by side.
The man gazed around himself, obviously awestruck by the magnificence of his amazing surroundings.
The woman, accustomed to the mall and everything in it, kept her attention for the man at her side.
“This part doesn’t seem so much a nightmare as a beautiful dream,” Buck Rogers commented happily.
“It’s taken a long time to rebuild,” Wilma Deering responded. “We’ve reached the point where we can once again start to grow. For more than four hundred years after the worldwide holocaust, people did little more than eke out their bare survival!”
[Buck Rogers 01] - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Page 4