IT WAS THE DAY OF THE ROBOT

by Frank Belknap Long

  “Yes,” she said. “You told me.”

  I was afraid to let her pass through the turnstile ahead of me, because I didn’t know how tumultuous the crowd might be inside. There was a greater risk of our becoming separated if she went first and was caught up in a swirl of people and swept along toward the track.

  We didn’t have to do much standing in line. For about ten seconds my heart stood still and I could feel the eyes of the Security Police trained upon me from high above. Then the turnstile started clicking and I was through, waiting to grab hold of her with a wild shouting at my back.

  I died a little death just in the four seconds it took her to come through. She hadn’t forgotten what I’d told her and I didn’t have to grab hold of her. Her hand darted into mine, and we turned to­gether to face a blaze of light and a clamor that was deafening.

  CHAPTER 12

  We stood at the base of the stadium’s ascending tiers, staring down at the shining tracks and the swiftly pedaling cyclists. The tiers extended above us for two or three hundred feet and were almost filled to capacity. There were at least twenty thousand spectators in the two lower tiers and the upper ones were only a little less crowded.

  I’d often wondered if the Big Brain, in the silent watches of the night, was not haunted by the horrors which its metaltapes re­corded. If a thinking machine can assemble and correlate the data in its memory banks, how can we be sure that it cannot experience emotion and be tormented by dreams it would prefer not to re­member on awakening? And if the Big Brain had, in the midst of such a nightmare, coined a name for the races, might it not have been the one that came into my mind unbidden as I stared out across the track? … The Contest of the Deadly Cyclists.

  It was just barely conceivable. But I did not really think that the Big Brain could be nightmare-haunted. I was only sure that some of the monitors were, and knew on what dangerous ground they were treading when they buttressed their tyranny with that kind of safety valve.

  The contestants rode furiously around oval tracks on vehicles very similar to the bicycles that boys and young men must have ridden through the ruins’ narrow streets when trains roared through the underground tunnels and the subway entrances had provided a more rapid means of transportation to every part of a city that had not yet become a wasteland of crumbling stone.

  I had seen three such vehicles in a museum of historical antiquities and the grotesquely shaped beetles which dated from about the same period and were even more popular as a means of transportation. Only the beetles looked odd, for the cycles still in use are much the same — two-wheeled, slender, pedal-propelled and gaudy with bright, contrasting colors and flying pennants.

  The riders were armed with long, spike-like weapons and metal balls on chains. If one of the spiked lances became enmeshed in the wheels of a racing cycle coming abreast of a competing rider, the man on the abruptly stalled vehicle would be sent hurtling through the air to land on the edge of the track, quite often with a fractured spine or fatal internal injuries.

  To the spectators it was the penalty for defeat in a display of daring that merited thunderous applause and carried no stigma, since in every race some of the contestants had to lose and the vanquished, if they were lucky enough to survive, could become the victors in another contest.

  The flying metal balls were even more deadly, for they were heavy enough when hurled with violence to crack another rider’s skull and even decapitate him. But it was to the contestants’ credit that they seldom used the metal balls with the intention of killing a competing rider outright before he could use his lance, but solely as a last-resort defensive measure.

  There were accidents, however — failures in precision timing which could be ghastly.

  What made the races so ancient-world barbaric was the spectator participation privilege. Soon after the race started half of the original riders were either so seriously injured that they were incapable of remaining in the race or were lying mortally injured at the edge of the track. At that point it was customary for a dozen or more spectators to descend from the tiers and leap upon the abandoned cycles.

  The contest continued without further interruption until several more cycles were abandoned. The race went on for days. Each race was numbered and there were half-hour pauses between every third race to enable the victors to return to the tiers and be em­braced and accepted as mates by women who had come to the ruins expecting to be fought over. That a bicycle race victory was more to an outcast woman’s liking than a knife-wielding victory by a man who could not hope to win such acclaim was hardly to be wondered at, for it flattered their vanity and gave them a wider choice of mates.

  The race that was just starting had already caused two bicycles to go spinning from the track and a third to overturn. One rider was lying sprawled out at the edge of the track, his limbs grotesquely bent and another was stumbling toward the tiers with a look of agony on his face. His right arm dangled and just before he reached the tiers he swayed and had to be helped up the steps a little to the right of where we were standing.

  No one need envy a telepath. I was not only almost tor­ment­ingly aware of how the cyclists felt, but the emotions which the spectators were experiencing beat in upon me in tumultuous waves. Deep in my mind a thousand voices seemed to be clamoring to make themselves heard.

  I could usually close my mind to thoughts I do not wish to share, by making a deliberate effort of will. In fact, telepathic communication was largely like a two-way street. The traffic moving in opposite directions seldom collides if the street is wide enough, and if you’re driving in a beetle you have no opportunity to communicate with the passengers in the swiftly passing cars.

  You have to be moving in the same direction as the mind you wish to tap and unless the wish is present the thoughts of others seldom sweep through your mind like a tidal wave.

  But it happens sometimes, when you’re in the midst of a very large crowd swayed by emotions that are tumultuous and completely uninhibited.

  I could barely endure the thoughts of cruel anticipation and the murderous rage that goes with frustration and a craving for the release from tension which the witnessing of a barbarous spectacle seems to bring about in some people.

  Not in me. But the tidal wave was so all-engulfing that for a moment the way I normally thought and felt went spiraling away from me, into dark depths that were shark-infested. A wave of revulsion surged up in me as I fought against that tide of malignancy and hate. But I knew also how the most brutal of prison guards felt when they were free to inflict irreparable injuries on the helpless men and women in their charge.

  High up in the tiers a woman was thinking, “If he is killed, watching him die will give me pleasure. But if he kills the opposing rider that pleasure will not be denied me, for the defeated man will be the one I will watch die. Then he will return to the tiers in triumph, with grievous wounds that he will make light of, and take me into his arms. I will not resist him, for his triumph will be mine. Death and love. What more could a woman desire?”

  And in another part of the stadium a man was thinking, “In a moment I will descend to the tracks. It will be kill or be killed and I do not care too much which way the scythe swings when Death decides that a big sleep is the best cure for one of us. Do I really want to go on living? A woman? That’s a cure too, and I came to the ruins looking for one. But maybe Death is better. In half the books you find in the ruins, in libraries choked with dust and rubble, Death is a woman. Why shouldn’t Death be a woman? To die is like going back into a big, dark womb, isn’t it? That’s what Death is, all right — a woman. I’ve known it all my life.”

  And still another man was thinking, “I’ll swing the metal ball straight at his head before he has a chance to mesh the wheels of my cycle. I’ll brain him. Sure, there’ll be a protest. If I do that and return to the tiers they may kill me. Well — let them try. I’ll go down fighting, laughing at them. I’ll laugh until my lungs burst. Bad sportsmanship is what they call
splintering a rider’s skull before he has a chance to do it to you. What a joke that is, when you think about it. They don’t know the meaning of sportsmanship. I’ve seen it once or twice on a metaltape when the Big Brain is punching out big words as a cover-up for what it has done to us. Goes back to the big Age of Sports. Baseball, football, boxing. But in those games you didn’t get killed so often. You could afford to give good sportsmanship a twirl.”

  Then, quite suddenly the cruel, oppressive thoughts were gone, and other thoughts impinged on my mind. A far-off voice seemed to be whispering to me, urging me to leave the shark-infested depths and swim with vigorous strokes sunward. Sunward through the brightening water until the last lingering trace of darkness vanished.

  “We are very close, you and I, because I am your biogenetic norm woman,” Claire seemed to be whispering. “I know you even better than you know yourself. You would never welcome Death and turn away from the sun. You love life too much.

  “Beauty you love and the great sea when it breaks and the wonder of a woman in your arms, her eyes misting with ecstasy as you caress her. You would never surrender your birthright.”

  I turned and stared at Claire in stunned disbelief, and for a moment I found it impossible to accept that kind of miracle. How could I accept it when her eyes were still those of a bewildered and frightened child and she was clinging to my arm as if I were her only support in a world that was the opposite of childlike.

  But surely no one else in the tiers could have sent such thoughts winging toward me. They were not the thoughts of an outcast woman who had suddenly decided I was just the right man for her. How could such a woman have known what I looked like, even — one distant man in a multitude? Even if she had been sitting in the lower tier and could see me clearly, would she have spoken of herself as my biogenetic norm woman?

  There was one way of making sure. I could turn stern and hold Claire at arm’s length and ask her why she had lied to me from the first and pretended to be a child-woman. And if she refused to say a word or went right on lying I could read the truth in her eyes.

  Or could I? How could I be sure that she wasn’t more skilled in the art of deception than any woman I had ever known?

  Still — I had to know and it was the most promising way of getting at the truth that I could think of. But before I could look at her accusingly and try to make her realize what a tragic barrier deception could erect between a man and a woman, a wild burst of shouting swept over the tiers.

  Two more riders had been hurled from their cycles and the lance of one was still spinning through the air. But it was not that double defeat which had caused the spectators to leap to their feet in wild excitement. It was the collision of a third rider with one of the stadium’s high stone walls. His cycle had gone completely out of control and the impact of the collision had hurled him back against the wall with such violence that a dark stain was spreading across the stone as he slumped to the track.

  Scattered across the track were three discarded lances and two metal balls, one of them still attached by its chain to the outflung wrist of a badly injured rider. He was writhing in pain and trying to get up, and another rider had stopped pedaling for an instant to avoid crashing into him.

  There was a tele-visual screen projecting outward over the upper tiers and so strategically placed that all of the spectators could see it. It was not a Big Brain propaganda screen, but had been erected by the strong-willed men whose combined genius had rebuilt a crumbling stadium and kept the races an unchanging freedom ruin sport for two full generations.

  There were always men who must exercise authority and keep the rules from being broken, even in a freedom ruin. It does not matter if the rules are barbaric, the activity over which they exercise control the most brutal of sports. They must seize power and hold it — or perish.

  It was as if the Big Brain had whispered to them: “You are outcasts and exiles. But you can still make men obey you if you can maintain absolute control over a freedom ruin sport that has be­come as indispensable as the most pernicious of habit-forming drugs to every man and woman in the ruins.

  “The races are a safety valve which must be preserved. And because of men like you, a marriage privilege and the right to make love would be meaningless if you could not also exercise power and make yourself feared; you have no choice. You must help me to preserve this safety valve. You are not just a ruffian sulking in a dark alleyway, but a stadium builder. You walk about with guards at your side and are protected from violence night and day. And some outcast women are very beautiful. There are rewards which only a stadium builder can claim. You have no choice, because you are what you are.”

  There were many such men in the ruins. They had kept the tracks in repair, the bicycle race beetles running. But I did not admire them.

  CHAPTER 13

  The screen had been blank when we’d entered the stadium. But now, quite suddenly, it lighted up, and the head and shoulders of a black-uniformed man appeared in the midst of the radiance, his thin, sharp-featured face creased by a frown.

  He waited for the shouting to subside a little, then raised his hand to enforce a silence which would enable him to make himself heard.

  His voice was harsh and deep-throated and the magnification of sound provided by the sound track caused it to reverberate throughout the stadium like a steadily beaten drum.

  “These are the rules,” he announced. “They must be obeyed by all of you, riders and spectators alike. Every spectator is privileged to participate, but remember — there are only fifty cycles. If you are a spectator you must await your turn. You must also be one of the few lucky ones.

  “You must wait until twelve cycles have been overturned before you descend from the tiers and claim your spectator privilege. If a dispute arises in the tiers and more than twelve of you attempt to descend to the tracks you must settle it among yourselves. But remember this. Only twelve spectators will be permitted to descend to the tracks at any one time.

  “At the base of every stairway the supervisors have stationed men armed with handguns who will blast you down without compunction if you disobey the rules. Only twelve spectators will be permitted to cross the tracks when a race is in progress, even if more than twelve riders have been unseated.”

  He had failed to mention that that particular rule was not always rigidly enforced, because a cycle lying riderless at the edge of the track grated on spectators and made them resent the fact that fewer riders would die. Sometimes as many as twenty spectators were allowed to cross the tracks and leap upon the abandoned cycles. But no rule in any sport is ever rigidly enforced when it goes against emotions that basic. I had put my arm around Claire’s waist and knew that she was trembling.

  I seemed to hear again the clicking metaltapes as the Big Brain answered the most puzzling of all questions — why a rule becomes strengthened when expediency makes it just a little elastic. “A rule must never be permitted to impose a tyranny that is absolute. Rules are made to be broken — up to a point. It must be made to seem that generosity is being exercised, a broad and understanding tolerance, a winking and a secret elbow-nudging as the rule is stretched a little.

  “Men and women must be made to feel that he monitors are very human and would not be above stretching a rule or two themselves if they thought they could keep it a secret. The monitors — or the men who enforce rules in a freedom ruin. Completely human and generous-minded, with a deep understanding of human needs and aspirations.

  “Even the need to be brutally inhuman when watching a brutal spectacle in a freedom ruin when decadence has taken over must seem to be sympathized with and understood by the upholders of the rules.

  “There’s a little sadism is all of us, chum. Don’t think we’re any different from you in that respect. So go ahead and stretch the rules a little. We’ll look the other way and don’t think we won’t be secretly envying you. We’re all in this together. It’s your sport and our sport and the only reason we have rules is to
keep a sport like this from disintegrating. You want to keep it brutal, don’t you? Well … so do we. But we know more about such things than you do. If you don’t have rules the brutality will become chaotic and the entire sport will fall apart.”

  As I said once before, the Big Brain wouldn’t have phrased it in precisely that way, because the Big Brain’s wisdom is always Society-orientated. The Big Brain would never have quoted ruin outcasts, even if they happened also to be stadium builders. Unless, of course, the Big Brain itself had a hidden rebellious streak and could fall asleep and have nightmares. I’ve mentioned that before too, as a possibility it would have been hard for me to take seriously.

  The man on the screen had paused an instant, as if he’d said enough about the danger the spectators would be running if they stretched the rules too far, and was about to give them some less threatening instructions.

  When he spoke again his voice had lost its harshness. “Re­member — the races will continue for six days. Five or six thousand of you will have an opportunity to participate. Not all of you came here to participate and there is no stigma attached to remaining a spectator.”

  A half-smile appeared for an instant on his lips, as if he wanted the spectators to think him a man who could unbend in an appealingly human way, and did not hold humor in contempt.

  “I am quite sure,” he went on, “that many of you have found women greatly to your liking. You would have nothing to gain by exchanging a woman you’ve risked your life to possess and who is properly grateful to you, for a woman you know nothing about. If you will permit me to be blunt — most men who participate in the races do so with only one thought in mind. They will return to the tiers with the certain knowledge that their strength and daring will have given them a victor’s privilege and they will enter a contest that will end in another victory … that of the bridal couch. Or am I mistaken about that? Every man must answer for himself, for what man can be sure of victory when he is alone with a woman in the dark? Perhaps that is that most dangerous and uncertain of all contests. I have won many such victories in my life, but if I were to tell you of the defeats —”