by Brian N Ball
“I knew of it!” pointed out Security.
“I was confused,” said Central Command.
“I was not confused,” said the harem robot. “Medium-grade though I am, I have records of Duty Commander’s actions. The Duty Commander acted properly.”
“Then he will assume control,” said Central Command.
“Unfortunately, the Duty Commander has just been killed,” said the harem robot. “His murderers are the anti-Confederation infiltrators.”
There was a long pause.
Khalia felt the blood-lust ebbing away. She began to realize what a tremendous effort of will had gone into Danecki’s restraint when he had the youth at his mercy. She took her foot off the youth’s neck.
“Murders must be reported to the Duty Commander,” suggested Security.
“The Duty Commander is dead,” pointed out Central Command.
Khalia listened, though she still could barely appreciate the meaning behind the calm voices. In the wide, long cavern, the three robotic speakers argued like thieves in a graveyard.
Dead. Danecki was dead! Khalia wondered if she herself wanted to live.
The youth groaned.
“I find the problem too difficult,” said Security. “How can the murder of the Duty Commander be reported to the Duty Commander? I know that a dead Duty Commander cannot function. Humans are not repairable.”
“The Black Army has marched,” put in a new voice. “Is the installation to be destroyed yet?”
“No!” put in Security and Central Command together. “An hour at least must elapse between the Army’s march and destruct.”
That settled, the harem robot spoke again: “It is usual for humans to be tried for murder. It is an offense.”
“Humans will try the infiltrators,” said Security.
“Soon there will be no more humans,” Central Command pointed out. “The Black Army has marched.”
Khalia followed the weird argument now.
Jacobi pushed himself up to listen.
“If there are no humans, the infiltrators cannot be put on trial,” said Security. “I think.”
“I will make a decision,” announced Central Command. “It is my function.”
Khalia refused to leave Danecki. The robots had kept their peace for ten minutes or more, yet she felt no urge to leave the still body.
Jacobi got up and walked about the great cavern. He too seemed unable to leave the scene of violence. At last he said: “Shouldn’t we do something to try to get out? I’ve no quarrel with you.”
“Go then,” the girl said.
“But you!”
Khalia ignored him.
What were they deciding, these age-old automatons? Khalia had let Danecki’s head rest on the cold floor. There was no more blood from his lips. She looked at her watch. Only twenty minutes had passed since they had rushed from the green and gold room to watch the passing of the monstrous Army.
She felt cold, helpless, afraid, and aged beyond anything she would have believed. And yet there was nothing to live for, so why regret the passing of her youth?
It seemed impossible that she felt such overwhelming self-pity when she realized that death might be near her. She remembered the girl who had looked at herself and said that it was an appalling waste to die at twenty-two.
Jacobi said: “What should we do with him?”
Khalia looked at the face of Danecki, relaxed in death. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t stay here—let’s try to find the others. We could try to get out! We don’t have to wait till the fort decides to blow itself up!”
“It won’t do that,” said Khalia. She felt no pleasure in explaining to Jacobi how the fort would destroy itself. “It will fall through a fault in the planetary mantle. We’re going to burn.”
A mechanical voice rang out sharply, stopping Jacobi’s incipient hysteria. “You are suspected murderers! Woman, you must surrender yourself to the duly appointed officer of the Judicial Investigating Commission of the Second Interplanetary Confederation. Man, you must accompany the woman!”
The machine waited.
“What does it mean?” asked Jacobi. He had the air of a boy. His thin face was pinched with tiredness.
Khalia felt no pity even then, though she tried to make it easy for him. “It means we’re being arrested,” she said. “The machines think we killed the Duty Commander.”
“But—but I thought he was killed a thousand years ago! Isn’t that what you were trying to establish! I heard it all in the hospital while my arm was being reset—the bones! The man’s been dead for centuries! I heard the robot telling you about the saboteurs—they died a thousand years ago! I took the knife from the skeleton! It can’t believe we’re the saboteurs! It’s mad!”
“Proceed to the Central Command Area,” ordered the robotic voice. “You are protected by the Charter of Human Rights, and you may answer the charges against you jointly, or separately. Proceed immediately. Otherwise restraint systems will be used.”
“I have restraint systems under control,” announced Security. “All are in working order.”
“But the fort’s going to destroy itself soon!” Jacobi said almost hysterically. “It can’t mean to arrest us now! Not when it hasn’t got an hour’s existence left!”
Khalia left him. She walked towards the narrow corridor that led past the three grim reminders of the millennially-old encounter, to the Central Command Area.
Before she began the upward ascent, she called loudly to the unseen robotic watchers: “Give the Duty Commander a fitting burial!”
The last she saw of the great, echoing cavern was the silent movement of the black hawsers which reached down for Danecki.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
Dross and Wardle had aged too.
Khalia saw that they knew Danecki was dead. And how he had died. Dross was on his feet, Wardle beside him.
The shrunken figure in the corner was Knaggs.
“We saw it,” said the gray-faced archaeologist. His mouth was a sunken line in the big jowls. Though he bulked hugely beside Wardle and the thin, frail figure of Mr. Moonman, he seemed to have lost his overwhelming physical impact. He was a tired, disappointed, and corpulent old man. “What can I say?” he asked. “He was a man who almost came to know happiness after his year of despair. And in the moment when he might have found some way of escaping from this place, he was struck down by a vicious young savage. I pity you, my dear.” He gestured to the screen which glowed with a faint green radiance. “We watched it all. The Black Army moving out—you and Mr. Danecki—then the youth creeping towards you both.”
“There was nothing we could do,” said Wardle. “I tried to move down the corridor, but the way was blocked. It seems that the fort has at last realized we are intruders and is treating us as such. I expect we’ll be treated as spies.”
“No,” said Khalia. “It intends to try us for murder.” She told the story.
They all stared at Jacobi.
He was biting on a knuckle, his white face anxious and afraid. “I was licensed,” he got out. “Our laws allow a life for a life. I was right! He’d have escaped—you said he would have contrived something! He always could! When my brother and I had him stone-cold outside in the forest, he escaped! When I caught him again, he found you! And he would have done it again! I heard them and I knew he would think of a plan! You don’t know him!”
“We knew him,” said Wardle.
Mr. Moonman had begun to take an interest in the proceedings. “So we are back here, where it all started,” he said, surveying the low cavern that was the Central Command Area. “The machines—the gadgets Mr. Knaggs spoke about—have been too much for us.”
He polished the dull-black face of the ancient robotic head which had been his companion throughout the long night. “Three deaths,” he said to it. “Mr. Knaggs, who might have told us more about these age-old machines. And poor Mrs. Zulkifar who thought herself my enemy bec
ause she feared a man who has seen the other side of the grave! And then Mr. Danecki, a man I came to admire. The man who was the victim of a barbaric vendetta law. This has been truly a place for violence, just as the guide books said. There is something sinister in all the things that remain of the Confederation, isn’t there, Doctor?”
Dross humored him. “There is, my friend.” Mr. Moonman noted the archaeologist’s salutation with a smile. “I knew the machines would win,” he went on. “Without a man like Danecki, the forces of night will always win.” He too stared at Jacobi. Wardle plainly felt the need for action. Khalia had grown used to his sudden spurts of energy, of his habit of bustling about—full of nervous enthusiasm for this or that project. She watched as he stepped about the cavern impatiently.
“An hour, eh?” the Brigadier mused. “An hour before it operates the destruct systems. What can we do with an hour, eh, Doctor? And this talk of a trial. Is it serious? Oh, I know the wretched machines have argued and decided what to do, but surely they’re not serious? I mean, if the whole installation is going to deposit itself into some crack in the planet’s crust, surely it won’t go through a rigmarole of setting up a court. Surely, Doctor?”
“The Confederation built resourceful robots,” said Dross. “It’s almost an academic point, though, isn’t it, Brigadier? Try us they might. Kill us they will, whether through the legal processes of the Human Rights Charter, or by taking us down into the bowels of this unhappy planet. As I say, it’s not a point to trouble overmuch about. We should prepare our minds to face the end. We have a short time in which to live the whole rest of our lives. Why make that short time unbearable by raising more false hopes, Brigadier?”
Khalia knew that she would welcome death. She shivered with a creaking fear when she thought of the gradually increasing heat of the fort’s slow descent. But the cold certainty of her grief accepted the notion of a term to the rest of her life.
Jacobi said: “Isn’t there something? Brigadier? Doctor?”
“You killed our hope,” said Khalia.
When the robots entered, Khalia screamed. They were something from a nightmare, ten-foot-high grotesques, decked out in the ceremonial garb of a long-dead judiciary. There were three of them.
The leader, a thing with a head like some new-hewn cob of iron ore, carried a six-foot-long sword. The sword glinted in the bright light as the automaton slowly turned to face the cringing group. It wore a red robe that hung to its two supporting legs; around its neck was a fur collar of some black-splashed white beast; and on the ponderous head was a full wig of curling hair.
Dross sighed with dismay and a reluctant admiration: “They’ve personalized themselves!” he managed to exclaim. “They’ve each built themselves a body. And they’ve manufactured the clothes of the Confederation’s judges! Not in my wildest dreams could I have forecast such a development!”
The two robots following were as imposing and as terrifying as the sword-carrier. One was decked out in black, completely in black. It wore a tight-fitting garment of black stuff, and a headpiece over the hastily contrived carapace. Red eyes stared unwinkingly from a jet-black mask.
Khalia saw what it carried. Rope.
The third of the frightful trio was, for her, more terrifying than the red-robed leader and the black-garbed second robot. It moved almost daintily on spindles of legs; it gazed with obvious enjoyment at the four human beings who huddled together in the middle of the Central Command Area in a bewildered group. It wore a gown, as the leader wore a gown, but this was a black cloth trimmed with white fur. On its cleanly sculptured head—almost a humanoid carapace—was a frilled wig, itself an imposing structure of gray curling hair.
“Monsters!” whispered Wardle. “Monsters!”
Jacobi had broken down. He was sobbing and calling for his mother.
Mr. Moonman and Dross faced the eerie robots with equanimity.
Khalia felt a helpless admiration for the archaeologist, and for the Revived Man. They accepted the robots for what they were: things made by man—not creatures from beyond, but groupings of chains of molecules, bonded metals, and plastics.
“What are they going to do! Oh, why did I come!” wailed Jacobi.
“Aberrations!” Wardle said angrily. “What are you! Damn it, what made you!”
Khalia was glad that Wardle could face them too. It helped with her own battered senses to see the stoicism of Mr. Moonman and Dross, as well as the angry all-too-human horror that Wardle was displaying.
“What will they do!” yelled Jacobi.
Mr. Moonman turned to him: “I think they’ll probably hang you.”
The robots arranged themselves in a group facing the humans. The gaudy robes of the ten-foot monster with the sword swayed as it moved.
“Be upstanding for the Confederation Chief Justice!” lisped the voice of the harem attendant.
The voice came from the mincing spindly figure. It bobbed in a crazed parody of ritual homage to the red-robed automaton.
Khalia knew she had been right about the mincing gait of the automaton. What they heard and saw was a robot which had been hastily manufactured by the ancient fort to personify the evil guardian of the green and gold room.
“I’ll take that,” said the unmistakable voice of the Security System to the ghastly red-robed caricature of a judge.
The red-robed figure handed the masked robot the sword. It held the length of rope negligently in one vast metal paw, the glinting sword in the other.
“Tee-hee-hee!” lisped the black-robed robot. “Court is convened!”
The red-robed automaton bowed and adjusted its bulk so that it appeared to sit. “You are saboteurs, murderers and spies,” it announced in the voice of Central Command. “Therefore you are criminals.”
Dross murmured something that Khalia did not catch.
The robot picked it up. “Humans are not machines,” it answered. “I agree.”
“We had so much trouble with the rules of procedure!” lisped the effeminate voice. Even the head of the monster had a vulpine, perverted look. “Eventually I remembered an old Totex recording we had on file—so I dug it out and my colleagues agreed to follow the old judicial procedures of the Confederation.”
“I speak now,” said Central Command.
“I execute the decisions of the court,” said Security. “That is my function.” It fondled the raw length of rope.
“I make decisions,” the red-robed automaton said firmly.
“Yes,” said the harem robot and the Security automaton together.
“Astonishing!” declared Dross. “Truly astonishing! What an evolutionary step this is, Brigadier! The robots are assuming the functions of the human controllers of the Confederation!”
“Silence!” lisped the harem attendant. “All must be done according to the proper procedures.”
“You talk too much,” the Security robot said. “It is for the criminals to talk before they are executed.”
“You can’t execute us!” Wardle burst out. “Damn it, you’re machines! Machines don’t do this sort of thing! Tell them, Doctor!”
“I was confused for some time,” the red-robed figure said calmly. “But now I understand my function. I must make it clear to you.”
Khalia saw that Jacobi was creeping towards the entrance to the corridor which led to the Black Army’s former lair. He crawled like a broken spider.
“Restraint,” ordered the red-robed monster.
A black hawser flashed from the ceiling and guided Jacobi back to the center of the cavern.
“Why resist?” said Dross. “We’re all dead now. Us, Mrs. Zulkifar, Mr. Danecki, my friend and colleague, Mr. Knaggs. Easy, my boy—be easy!”
“We’re not spies—we’re not saboteurs! And there’s only one murderer here! The youth with the knife!” Wardle burst out. “Judges! A judicial system—these things are for men! You aren’t a part of the world of men! You’re machines—you’re things that we put together!”
Khal
ia wondered what crazed thoughts spun through the circuits of the machines. What vast collection of bad logic had brought them into existence? How had they contrived the robes, the grisly apparatus of sword and rope? The peace of death had seemed inviting, a beckoning thing, when Danecki had stopped breathing. Now, the sheer physical threat of the robots brought all the terror of violent death back.
The things were motivated by an elemental sense of justice. They were implacable juggernauts who had no human understanding or sympathy. All they knew was that they had some ritual to play out in this lost underground world of nightmare.
She listened to the gradual building-up of a case against them. It was a thing of crazed conjecture and the wildest misunderstanding of the “facts” the fort was aware of.
“May I outline the case for the prosecution?” lisped the harem robot. “After all, I’m a witness! Yes?”
“You are a witness,” agreed the red-robed figure.
“He isn’t allowed to give evidence!” exclaimed Dross. “You’re not working to the rules of procedure in the judicial system of the Confederation!”
“You may state your case later,” said the automaton. “Proceed!”
In answer, the black-robed figure marched to the four humans. It pointed a skeletal arm of raw steel at them. “These spies entered through the spin-shaft tunnel! They tried to find the location of the Army. The woman is a concubine. She guided the others into the installation! She was the mistress of the Duty Commander.”
“It all happened a thousand years ago!” said Khalia. “A thousand years ago!”
“The Duty Commander is dead!” said the Security robot, alarmed by the reintroduction of a point he thought settled.
The black-robed figure shook its frills. “Humans do not live for a thousand years!”
“Automatons do,” put in the red-robed figure.
“Yes!” cried the Security robot.
“Good!” said the harem attendant. “That is established. You are not a thousand years old.”