by Brian N Ball
Sensing the nearness of their destination, the grim phalanxes put on speed again. In utter silence, they came to a vast river mouth.
Khalia saw the Army pause once more.
Batibasaga appeared at the head, a small greenish automaton in the white moonlight. He pointed towards the heaving black sea.
The Army slid forward, a great wave of cold lava. Black water met the onrush of the robots. They waded out and the waters swallowed them up.
“Sunk, by God!” Wardle said in awe.
Several things happened at once in the Central Command Area.
The big screen displayed the onrush of the Black Army. Khalia’s eyes could not leave the incredible scene. But the harsh clamor of the Central Command System’s voice held her attention too.
And there was Dross, pulling at her arm, saying over and over again something that she recognized but could not admit as the truth. It was so astonishing an idea that she began to weep. She felt fat warm tears rolling down her face. And then the woman who held her was helping her towards the middle corridor.
Still she watched the screen. Still Wardle’s exclamation of awe came to her. She missed, however, the end of the Army.
“The Duty Commander is showing a return to efficiency,” stuttered the metallic voice. It blocked Khalia’s mind, that demanding clamor. “Duty Commander Zeuner is receiving attention in the human maintenance unit! He is a thousand years old. This system is again confused.”
Dross was the only one who immediately grasped the significance of what the Central Command System was saying. “Batibasaga!” he rapped out. “Get this confirmed —it can’t be Zeuner!”
But Khalia couldn’t hear. The stunning experience of the march held her eyes, and the wild hopes that she was beginning to feel in the pit of her stomach were radiating through her entire body and threatening to bring her whole being bursting into flower.
“Sunk without trace!” Wardle was saying.
She heard him as the woman took her firmly by the shoulders and hurried her away at Dross’s command.
“Make sure!” he called to her. “Batibasaga has already checked with the Central Command System—there’s a badly-wounded man in the hospital—the fort thinks it’s Zeuner, but we know he’s dead! Batty thinks it’s Brigadier Wardle, how or why I don’t know! But the man answers to one description! Make sure, my dear!”
“And it was planned this way from the beginning?” asked the leader of the Outlanders.
“Exactly,” said Dross. “The anti-Confederation saboteur reprogrammed the circuits that controlled the Black Army. When they marched, they followed his path. It led by the shortest and most direct route to the Western sea—there!”
The screen showed the upheaval of the Army’s plunge. Big waves swept towards the shore. Beneath them was the turmoil of the great slabs of robotic matter digging furiously into the ocean bed. After a while, they stopped, and the big slow swell of the waves began again.
“They—they—where are they!” Wardle was utterly bewildered.
“Gone into Earth’s dustbin,” said Dross. “And there’s the beautiful irony of it all, Brigadier. Perfect!”
Khalia knew where to go. Once you were used to it, the fort’s layout was obvious. Central Command where it should be, in the middle. Radiating from that area, the weapons control systems down one corridor, the decision-making computers down another. Between them, in two lower levels, the installation’s service areas. Among these, the harem. Beside that, the hospital.
Khalia tried to hold back the tears, but they came in a flood. She caught her breath painfully between sobs; she sweated profusely, her hair became entangled, and the bright red suit she wore was spattered with her tears. She was conscious of her appallingly disheveled appearance. What she didn’t see was the brightness in her eyes and the thrusting eagerness of her run through the corridor.
Zeuner functioning weakly! And Central Command confused. Batibasaga himself confused because he thought that the Brigadier was a youngish man with heavy shoulders and a deep wound in the chest—with one lung caved in and the heart action so weak that it barely showed on the machine!
“Don’t let it be wrong!” Khalia sobbed as she reached the silent door.
The woman with her said something, but Khalia was too tense to allow the words to break into the precious build-up that was threatening to break out like some great eruption of love in the silent fort.
She passed through the door. Machinery hung in swaths over the white hospital bed. A gentle whining of liquids under pressure came from the equipment hooked into the shape beneath the covers.
Khalia ran.
“Incredible!” Wardle exclaimed.
“Inevitable,” Dross contradicted him. “Where else? Where else could the robots be sent? Not out to the other planets—they’d be as potent on Mars, or even on Venus, as on Earth. No, Brigadier. Our saboteurs thought this one out with beautiful logic. They sent the robots down Earth’s own conveyor belt.”
The Outlanders who had remained smiled.
“Doctor, this isn’t just conjecture? You’re not—not showing us a fantasy?”
“No! Ask about the social customs of the ancients and Dross will give you a clear and authoritative answer! I agree that it might sound farfetched, but not when you consider what the inhabitants of this planet came to, as a last resort, when their waste products threatened their environment. No! Listen to Dross!”
He turned away and spoke to Batibasaga. “The girl?”
Batibasaga allowed a clutch of sensors to pump information into his humanoid palms. “She is content now,” he said.
Wardle said: “Content—not, not, surely not—Danecki?” he finished with a whisper.
“Zeuner. Wardle. Danecki,” agreed Dross.
Wardle was speechless.
“Toctonic sinks!” Dross said into the silence. “Toctonic sinks! That was the answer—find them all over the planet! A deep trench in the planetary crust where there’s plenty of seismic activity. Lots of underground faults and flaws. As I say, find a place where the Earth’s crust is weak, ally it with low gravity, and deposit your surplus waste in it! If the waste is compressed sufficiently, down it goes —and it keeps on going down! Beneath the crust, down into the hottest and most heavily-pressurized regions! That’s how the Black Army was disposed of, Brigadier. It was treated as so much refuse!”
“Heavy mass,” said one of the Outlanders. “They’d be dense and heavy. Programmed to march to their own rubbish-sink! As you say, Doctor, there’s a subtle irony about it that is quite beautiful!”
Wardle tried to adjust to the loss of the Army. “What a waste,” he sighed. “What a find! What an end!”
Dross clapped him on the back. “Isn’t there enough here to amuse you, Brigadier? Why not stay—take Mr. Knaggs’s place, if you will! Yes, why not stay here?”
Wardle considered the idea. “Yes. Why not?”
“And Danecki?” asked the leader of the Outlanders. “What happens to Danecki?”
He was unconscious. His face was narrow. The closed eyes were sunk in deep, black-lined white pits. The strong nose was too thin for the gaunt face. His breathing was shallow but regular. Blood seeped into him, and oxygen whispered from a tube.
From the head of the bed, a thin metallic voice said: “The Duty Commander is a thousand years old. He is responding to treatment. A very superior robot inquired after his health. I was able to report that he has a ninety-seven percent chance of survival. He is not dead. But he is a thousand years old.”
“I don’t care,” said Khalia.
Danecki’s eyes fluttered open. Khalia thought of her appearance. He tried to whisper.
“Don’t!” she said. “Don’t try to talk!”
There was the hint of a smile. “You’re beautiful,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice.
Khalia knew that she would explode with love.
“This blood-feud worries me,” said Wardle. “Danecki told me about it. Bad busine
ss! That youth won’t forgive —never! Not the forgiving kind. Did you see his eyes when he told us he’d accomplished his mission? Empty. Nothing there. He’s beyond feeling.”
“Danecki’s dead,” said Dross.
“Correction,” began Batibasaga.
“Don’t interrupt me! Listen! Danecki is dead. We’ll put the Jacobi youth into his ship and lock the course onto his own planet. You do that, Batty.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So far as he’s concerned, the whole unpleasant business is over. Finished.”
“And then?” asked the leader of the Outlanders.
“Danecki could help here?” suggested Wardle. “There’ll be plenty to do.”
“No,” said Dross. “We’ll be in the eyes of the entire Galaxy when the story gets out. We’ll have droves of sightseers of all kinds, from official buffoons to the usual tourists. And I can’t keep them away. It won’t be safe for Danecki to stay here.”
Dross was looking at the Outlanders. Their leader smiled. “He’ll be safe with us. And the girl.”
“I’ll never leave you,” Khalia said to the unconscious Danecki. “How could I?”
“Batty,” said Dross. “Mr. Knaggs. Mr. Moonman. And the poor lady. If you find anything—”
“Yes, sir. I thought on the hill, overlooking the ruins—”
“That would be appropriate,” said Dross. He looked around the fort. “I’ll be glad to see daylight again. It’s been a long night.”