IT WAS THE DAY OF THE ROBOT

by Frank Belknap Long

  Several of the passengers had left their seats and crowded into the aisle, and we had been elbowed forward a little and could see directly out of one of the windows.

  The tele-visual screen was a hundred feet square and it towered above the buildings on firm metal support. It had been erected by the monitors in compliance with the Big Brain’s instructions, three miles from the stadium and a short distance to the right of the open highway. It had been erected to serve as both an enticement and a warning.

  It was almost as if the Big Brain itself had materialized directly in the path of the careening bus, and was advising the passengers to leave the ruins and accept a different kind of exile before it was too late.

  “My wisdom can protect you,” the metaltapes seemed to be promising. “This is Venus Base. Men are freer here than they are on Earth. You will not be put to death if you return, and confess your guilt and ask to be sent to Venus Base. If there are too many outcasts — Society will be forced to move against the ruins and every man and woman who has rebelled against my wisdom will pay for their defiance with their lives. It may be later than you think.”

  But it wasn’t the Big Brain we saw on the lighted screen. It was Venus Base in sound and color. I saw again the rugged plains, and the distant mountain ranges, veiled in purple mist. I saw the huge construction projects, and the clattering, earth-tunneling machines. I saw the breed of men I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with for two long years, lusty, brawling, authority-defying men, shouting their independence to the skies. I saw them leaving the construction site, with heavy packs on their backs, setting out across the plain for another construction camp. In a wilderness paradise perhaps, where they would be free to sit around campfires at night and break new ground in the first flush of dawn, free to lay the foundations of a new city with the certain knowledge that generations to come would be grateful to them and regard them as legendary giants.

  No matter how great the tyranny may be under which he labors, you cannot take from a man that kind of glory, for no man lives in the present alone. The future is also a part of him, integrated into his bones. Even if he has no heirs who are flesh of his flesh, he adopts tomorrow’s children and they become his heirs.

  I saw the twenty rocket-launching pads, and the shining metal prefabs, barracks two hundred feet in length where a hundred men could lie on narrow cots and dream of a new tomorrow, when the newness and the bigness and the brightness would be increased ten-fold.

  I saw that all, and for an instant my heart leapt with joy. I had been a part of it, and could be a part of it again.

  And yet — And yet—there was something wrong with it. There were men on the screen who could shout their independence to the skies. But nowhere were there any women. And how can a man take pride in his independence and proclaim that he is really free when he cannot make love to a woman, and feel her slender sweet body moving beneath him, and experience a rapture that blots out the present and the past, and makes only one moment seem eternal, as long as forever is.

  CHAPTER 11

  The nearer the bus swept to the lighted screen the more tremendous the tele-visual image sequence became. We saw the valleys between the mountains and snowy-plumed birds winging their way skyward. We saw the miles upon miles of jungle that dwarfed the rain forests of the Amazon, for every tree was as huge as the California redwoods and was interlaced with blue and vermilion vines.

  We saw emerald-green lakes and gleaming white beaches and two dozen jungle-encircled construction camps. We saw buildings in every stage of construction and fenced-in areas filled with rocket-transported supplies. We saw men bathing in the lakes, shouting and laughing and trying their best to convince one an­other that all was well.

  But all was not well.

  There were no women anywhere.

  For a moment I felt closer to the passengers on the bus, for it was still their privilege to fight to the death over a woman and keep her for an hour or a day — if they were lucky enough to survive the flashing knife of an antagonist as desperate as they were for love, and just as reckless in his pursuit of it.

  No women anywhere. No women at all.

  Then I remembered Claire and how different it would be for me if I ever returned to Venus Base.

  For me the image on the lighted screen did have meaning, did hold out hope. Just how serious had my rebellion been? It had to be serious, or the Security Police would not have entered the ruins in pursuit of me. But could I still confess my guilt and return to Venus Base?

  I had struck a Security Police officer in the performance of his duty. And the circumstances under which I had struck him had been unusual, adding to the gravity of the offense. An emotional illusion therapy shop was a dangerous place in which to strike anyone with the authority of the monitors behind him. And what if I had been under suspicion from the first and had been followed to the shop from the computation vault?

  I had questioned my original computation and demanded an­other analysis and a third one after that, and I had just returned from Venus Base, where so much freedom was accorded a man that a marriage-privilege-denied computation should have seemed to him a small thing.

  In the eyes of the monitors — this is a completely trivial limitation on his right to live his life to the full in the natural paradise that was being produced on the screen. That alone could have made me suspect.

  But what if I returned and made a full confession, what if I accepted the promise the Big Brain seemed to be making to every man and woman in the ruins? What if my life was spared and I was permitted to return to Venus Base with —

  With Claire? Would I be able to do that, even if I succeeded in concealing the truth from them? I would be watched twice as closely. I would be under constant surveillance. My very confession would keep them on the alert for any attempt I might make to take even a concealed weapon with me to Venus, let alone an android woman.

  No, I’d have no chance at all. The promise was meaningless as far as I was concerned.

  It was more than meaningless. To have gambled on it would have been a betrayal of everything I believed in. And suddenly, just as the bus careened past the enormous screen, I remembered what Agnes had said to me between sleeping and waking in the room where I had left her slumped back against the wall.

  She had asked me to betray the men and women I had seen in the pass, had pleaded with me to turn traitor. And I had awakened to find her clinging to me, her lips warm against mine. But the instant she’d told me that Claire was in danger she had meant nothing to me and I had struck her in rage.

  Was I less sure of what I had to do now, just because I’d seen Venus Base on a screen that was an ugly kind of propaganda attempt to make the ruin outcasts think that there was still a chance for them to exchange one kind of bondage for another? A worse kind of bondage, actually, because there were women in the ruins, and any kind of woman — even one who was a strumpet and a pawn to every man who fought to possess her — was better than no woman at all.

  My thoughts returned to Claire again and just feeling the warmth of her slender body pressed close to me, and knowing how beautiful she was, strengthened my determination to remain a rebel, even if I couldn’t be sure of outdistancing Death when I got close to the finish line.

  The enormous screen was completely transparent, and even when the bus was on the far side of it I could see the images which were still making some of the passengers lean from the windows to get a better view.

  And quite suddenly, the Big Brain did appear. The Venus Base scenes vanished and the many-tiered bulk of the Giant Computer filled the screen. I could see all of the winking lights and clicking computation circuits, and the triangular slots at its base into which the punched metaltapes fell.

  It filled the screen for an instant and then receded a little and the entire computation vault came into view. There were five tormented men and women in the vault, standing before the slots, but they did not look tormented on the screen. The monitors had made sure that they woul
d look calm and assured, as if they had complete faith in the Big Brain’s wisdom and would gladly accept what they read on the tapes, even if it condemned them to a lifetime of frustration and permanent exile on Venus Base.

  Two Security Guards hovered in the background, with kindly expressions on their faces, their electro-saps well concealed.

  I couldn’t help wondering just whom the monitors were hoping to deceive. I was quite sure that every passenger on the bus — every man and woman in the ruins, in fact — had stood more than once in the computation vault and had seen how the Security Guards usually looked. I was equally sure they’d become ruin outcasts solely because they couldn’t endure the way the future went blank for them when the metaltapes informed them there was no hope at all. Particularly when the guards nudged them with their electro-saps and told them that there were other men and women waiting to die inwardly and the space they were taking up no longer belonged to them.

  When propaganda is nine-tenths a lie, the right words spoken with eloquence can sometimes make all of it seem reasonably sound. Someone down in the right hand corner of the screen was doing his best to make the passengers forget how they’d felt when a marriage-privilege-denied computation had come clicking out of the slot to fill them with bitterness and despair. But I couldn’t hear what he was saying, because the bus had passed out of range of the screen’s sound track. I could see the gestures he was making, and that was all. I wasn’t even sure whether he was a monitor or a Security Guard. Possibly he was just a glib talker with no official stand­ing who had been stationed there by the monitors to speak for the Big Brain.

  At least fifty buses would pass the screen on the way to the races and some would slow down a little and catch more of the message, and a few would be traveling so fast the passengers would only get a two-minute glimpse of Venus Base in full sound and color. But the monitors must have felt it would average up pretty well in its propaganda impact, for the enormous screen was the only new construction project in the ruins, and setting it up had been a risky un­dertaking. Fifteen construction workers, guarded by Security Police officers, had spent a week in the ruins erecting it. They had been forced to carry it in sections through an abandoned subway station, and along eight miles of track before it could be reassembled three miles from the stadium.

  A half-ton of heavy equipment had been carried into the ruins as well, to make sure that the screen would be protected and that anyone touching it would be instantly electrocuted. So far no at­tempt had been made to demolish it.

  The bus was less than a half-mile from the stadium now and I could see the crowds surging about the base of the big gray building. There were fifteen or twenty other buses in the parking area to the left of it, and four were just unloading. I could see the five projecting tiers which completely encircled the building and the wide en­trances with their clicking turnstiles on each level.

  When I shut my eyes I could almost hear the clicking and it struck a chill to my heart, for it seemed like a clock with a red second hand ticking off the minutes that must pass before Death could take over and become master of ceremonies.

  The passengers were all shouldering their way toward the rear of the bus in their eagerness to be the first to descend and it was hard for me to maintain my balance and keep Claire from being forced back against the guardrail. A man could protect himself with vigorous elbow jabs but a woman was in danger of being crushed if there was no one between her and the guardrail. I managed to keep her well away from it by gripping her arm tightly and rotating her slowly about as I interposed my shoulders as a buffer zone.

  There was a wild shouting as the bus entered the parking area and began to slow down, crossing diagonally from the gate to a cleared space about eighty feet from the stadium. It came to a jarring halt beside another bus that was no longer crowded with passengers. The driver was still at the wheel, however, and an outsized, corded-necked man was just getting off, carrying a struggling wo­man.

  She was screaming and kicking, but the instant he descended he slapped her face to quiet her and kissed her with such savage violence that she went limp in his arms. She made no further protest when he twined his fingers in her hair, tightened his hold on her and started walking toward the stadium without a backward glance.

  A moment later I was also descending with a woman in my arms. Lifting Claire up and carrying her off the bus seemed the only way of making absolutely sure she wouldn’t be injured in the crush. The passengers were in such haste to get to the stadium they no longer cared how violently they had to shoulder their way to the rear guardrail and leap to the ground.

  A half-mile beyond the stadium, with its double spiral of tracks that extended for several hundred feet to the right and left of the massive structure, the ruins became an area of narrow streets and crumbling buildings again.

  When I’d told Claire we’d try to lose ourselves in the crowd I had been visualizing that area as the one we’d head for, if we could get to it on foot without making ourselves too conspicuous. But the instant I set Claire down we were caught up in a surging crowd of passengers from two other buses which had careened to a halt on opposite sides of the vehicle we’d just descended from.

  It’s easy enough to lose yourself in a crowd of two hundred shoving men and women. But it’s the opposite of easy to keep from being swept along with it when it’s moving in just one direction. We were right in the center of a crowd that had only one thought in mind, to get to the stadium as quickly as possible.

  We were swept along and had no chance at all to move in the opposite direction or even fight our way to where the milling, closely packed throng thinned out a little. If I’d been alone I could have shouldered my way out, but with Claire to protect it was out of the question.

  I made one brief attempt and gave it up as hopeless. We had to move with the crowd and trust to luck that before we got to the stadium we’d get a chance to clear a path for ourselves when the pressure behind us eased a little. A third of the shouting men and women would probably break ranks ahead of the others when we drew close to the turnstiles. Or so I told myself.

  I was being too optimistic. More buses had drawn up in the parking area, some from the ruins on the far side of the stadium, and the crowd increased in density as we approached the turnstiles.

  We were hemmed in with a vengeance. But that didn’t mean we’d be forced to pass through a turnstile into the stadium. All of the spectators ahead of us would have to await their turn in single file, and before a turnstile could start clicking the rotating mechanism had to be firmly grasped and set in motion.

  We could have rebelled and come to an abrupt halt before one of the turnstiles, forcing all of the spectators behind us to control their impatience. We could have insisted on our right to walk toward the stairway at the rear of the stadium, and ascend to the tier above, where there was another long row of clicking turnstiles with fewer spectators using them.

  It would have caused a commotion and aroused a great deal of bitter resentment. But we could have gotten away with it. We could have ascended to the tier above and passed quickly along it until we came to another stairway and descended to ground level again. Then we could have mingled with a smaller crowd and left it unobtrusively and headed for the crumbling buildings a half-mile away with a very good chance of not being stopped by anyone.

  We could have gotten away with it if I hadn’t happened to glance upward and seen the four Security Police officers standing on the circular tier directly overhead, staring down at the crowd that was hemming us in. I’m not phrasing that in just the right way. The instant I saw the Security Police officers I knew we’d have had no chance at all of getting away with it.

  For an instant I couldn’t seem to breathe and my temples swelled to bursting. Then I remembered how close-packed the crowd was, and how hard it would be for them to get a good look at us from above when we were just two of several hundred people.

  Even if we had to pass through the turnstile one at a time an
d become conspicuous for an instant there was a strong likelihood that they wouldn’t recognize us. If we passed into the stadium quickly enough just the glimpse they’d get of us from that high above wouldn’t be as much help to them. They’d just see the tops of our heads, for they’d be directly over us. Perhaps Claire’s great beauty would give them the edge, because there’s something about that kind of beauty that’s hard to mistake, no matter how brief a glimpse you may get of it. But we had to chance it.

  I put my arm around Claire’s shoulder to steady and reassure her, without making any further attempt to resist the pressure that was keeping us moving forward so swiftly that the men and women in front of us were already advancing in single lines a few yards from the turnstiles.

  “We’re going into the stadium,” I said. “Don’t look up. We must pass through the turnstiles as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”

  “We will go into the stadium,” she said.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Through the turnstile right up ahead. I’ll go first and the moment you come through I’ll be facing you. Give me your hand instantly. We mustn’t get separated, so don’t let anyone come between us, and prevent you from following me. Watch what I do when I pass through. You press down on the long metal bar and the turnstile will begin to turn. It will keep turning until you’re inside.”

  I stared into her eyes and was sure that she understood. There was no bewilderment in them or the slightest hint of incomprehension. But just to make doubly sure I added, “Turnstile — gate. We’re going into the stadium through that gate right up ahead.”

  “Gate,” she said. “We are going into the stadium to watch a bicycle race.”

  “We will have to watch them,” I said, “to keep the danger from harming us. Are you sure you understand? Danger. You asked me what danger was and I told you.”