IT WAS THE DAY OF THE ROBOT

by Frank Belknap Long

  Speed — speed was really the secret. It was also the most difficult problem the riders had to content with. The cycles speeded up and slowed down constantly and it was hard to control the speed with accuracy, because each of the cycles responded instantly to the slightest acceleration in the pedaling.

  There was always the danger that your speed would become too great, and you’d lose control of the cycle, leave the track and go crashing into the stadium wall. You had to slow down abruptly at times in self-protection, and that gave the rider directly behind you a better chance of overtaking you. All he had to do was stay alert and increase his own speed just as you slowed.

  No matter how skillfully he pedaled every rider was certain to be overtaken sooner or later — once, twice or a half-dozen times.

  I had forgotten for a moment that the main purpose of such a contest was to test a man’s courage to the utmost and that he was supposed to think only in terms of striking skill and aggressive action.

  My most important adversary, the one I must try to unseat as quickly as possible, wasn’t the one who was coming after me with a similar deadly purpose in mind. If I was overtaken Long Legs would, of course, become my most immediate and important ad­versary. But until that happened it was the cyclist directly in front of me I should be concentrating on.

  The contest was not primarily a flight from danger with each cyclist thinking of himself as a possible victim, with the need to keep his wits about him in a desperate struggle just to stay alive. That psychology could be fatal. It was a “fox-pursued-by-hounds” psychology and could sap a man’s stamina and capacity to survive before he got started.

  It took skill to outwit a pursuer and a fair measure of courage as well, but that courage and skill must not be contaminated by fear. And the best way to keep fear at bay was to go on the offensive and work up a steady, controlled rage against the cyclist immediately in front of you.

  Maybe that rage should not even be controlled. Maybe it should take complete possession of you, become savagely destructive and as primitive as the jungle night.

  But could you work up that kind of rage against someone whom you had no reason to hate? I didn’t know, because I had never tried it.

  Could I make myself believe that the cyclist directly in front of me had done me a great and irreparable wrong — a wrong that would not be avenged unless I killed him? Not just unseat him and send his cycle spinning but deal him a mortal injury.

  Wasn’t it just barely possible that a rage so great would give me a feeling of strength and supremacy that would enable me to laugh scornfully and deal him a lesser blow — a blow that would bring him down but not prove fatal?

  Would that work? Could that kind of rage ever be less than wholly destructive? When reason was completely absent could a man so enraged ever be capable of sparing his victim?

  Well … and why not? Grit your teeth and begin to hate. You dislike the cyclist ahead just on principle. You don’t like the set of his shoulders, the color of his hair. Give reason a slight rein at first. Justify your dislike to yourself.

  Then forget about reason. Don’t you see? Your hate is getting stronger. You don’t need reason any more. Forget about it entirely. You’ve got it cooked. Your rage is becoming a splendid, barbaric thing. You don’t need to have any reason for hate. What ever made you think you needed a reason, what ever gave you such an idea in the first place? Hell, everyone has to fight to stay alive, doesn’t he?

  I shuddered and set my lips tight. I just couldn’t do it — couldn’t work up that kind of rage against anyone, let alone the cyclist in front of me.

  But I knew I’d have to work up some kind of rage if I hoped to survive at all, because the cyclist directly ahead of me was — Winner-Take-All.

  I couldn’t just shut my eyes and pretend he wasn’t there, the contestant who had been overtaken eight or ten times and had sent as many cycles spinning with an adroit twist of his lance.

  Thirty feet of gleaming track still separated us, for he hadn’t slowed down once. For a full minute the distance between us neither lengthened nor shortened and that must have annoyed him, for quite suddenly he turned his head and stared back at me.

  I could see the harsh set of his features as the sunlight slanted down over him, but what angered me the most was the look of cold animosity in his eyes. He had never set eyes on me before, but he’d made a very good job of convincing himself that he ought to hate me. If it had been a savagely primitive kind of rage it would have angered me less than the cold, calculating way he’d allowed pure venom to spill over in his mind.

  I stepped more firmly on the pedals and my cycle shot forward with a speed that startled me. The distance between us diminished to twenty feet — and then to fifteen. The whir of the wheels was loud in my ears, louder than the beating of my heart. I fought against an impulse to clutch the steering apparatus tightly, realizing just in time that a too firm grip would have started the cycle zigzagging and perhaps sent it hurtling from the track.

  Winner-Take-All straightened in his seat, clearly aware that I was about to overtake him. He could have increased his own speed by stepping on the pedals as hard as I had done, and lengthened the distance between us to twice what it had been. But he chose not to do so.

  His neckcords were stiffening now and his lance arm was in swift, preparatory motion. But an instant before I swept abreast of him he glanced back once more, and that was a mistake. He had to turn swiftly again to steady his cycle, and I picked precisely that moment to strike.

  I could see the glint of terror in his dark eyes as my lance meshed the back wheel of his cycle and brought it to a grinding halt.

  He had only one chance to save himself, and he did not hesitate to resort to it in the life-endangering way that was sternly forbidden by the rules. As the cycle teetered and hung poised he raised himself a little and hurled the metal ball, aiming it straight at my head.

  The backlash of the chain made a shining arc in the air and if I hadn’t ducked the instant I’d seen the ball coming it would almost certainly have splintered my skull.

  The rage I’d fought against and didn’t want to feel was boiling up in me now. Maybe there are times when a man has no choice, when he has to let the caged savage loose.

  I didn’t wait for his cycle to overturn. I descended to the track and hurled myself upon him, gripping him by the wrist and dragging him to the track, chain and all. I used the chain as a weapon, raising his wrist and lowering it as I brought it forcibly into contact with his skull. I was careful not to let him slug himself too hard — just hard enough to prevent him from getting to his feet and hurling the ball at me again.

  I stopped the instant he slumped and I was sure that he had blacked out.

  Between us we’d made a big rent in the rules and I had no idea how the spectators were going to feel about it. I could only hope the supervisors at trackside had noticed how close he’d come to killing me when he’d hurled the metal ball. If they had and were convinced it wasn’t an accident all they’d have to do to clear me and keep the spectators from becoming enraged was activate an electronic circuit and the man on the screen would announce that Winner-Take-All was a loser all the way. When he woke up he’d be facing a death sentence and all I’d get would be a disciplinary reprimand for descending from a cycle voluntarily, which was also a violation of the rules.

  I didn’t really think they wouldn’t see it as an accident — if they’d noticed it at all. But I was wrong. They activated the electronic circuit and the man on the screen started to talk about it with anger in his voice.

  He didn’t get far, because the applause had already started and it became thunderous before he’d spoken twenty words.

  I’d never heard anything quite like it. It was a wild ovation that shook the tiers, and made the tracks vibrate. It was so tremendous that it stopped the race. The riders drew in to the side of the track and dismounted and the armed men at the base of the tiers had difficulty in keeping several hundred spectat
ors from descending to the two stairways and swarming out over the tracks, headed in my direction. A few of them actually got past the upholders-of-the-rules and were running toward me.

  It stunned me for a moment, until the machinery of my brain started moving again and I began to understand what had set it off.

  Winner-Take-All had covered himself with glory. To unseat ten or twelve riders in just one race was a feat that probably had never been equaled before, let alone surpassed. And when a man has been built up that way his admirers don’t like to think that they’ve been completely taken in and that he is a coward at heart. When he hurled the metal ball straight at my head they’d seen him for what he was.

  Disillusion and rage had made them transfer their allegiance to me. I’d dragged a popular hero down from his pedestal and slugged him unconscious with the chain at his wrist. And I’d meshed his gears before he could score another victory in a contest of skill.

  I wasn’t particularly proud of what I’d done. For a moment I had let the caged savage loose. It had been his life or mine and I’d acted solely in self-defense. But still the savage had helped me, and I was sorry I’d been forced to let him out of his cage. He exists, I suppose, in every man but I still wasn’t proud of what I’d done. The quicker he was hurled back into the cage again the better, and if I could starve him to death on a bread-and-water diet for the rest of his life so much the better. But the spectators had no way of know­ing how I felt.

  I was popular hero number one now, and for an instant I was still too shaken to fully realize what it meant.

  Then I grasped it in its entirety and knew exactly what it meant. The crowd would lift me to their shoulders just as the big man had predicted before I’d descended to the tracks, and carry me to the top of the stadium and there would be a stairway leading straight down from there to the entrance gate and I could be through it and on my way to rejoin Claire without running the slightest risk of being stopped by the Security Police. I’d be a popular hero all the way down and my only problem would be to keep so many admirers from accompanying me down that it might slow up my progress a little.

  And that’s the way it worked out. Only — I didn’t even have to square my shoulders and walk calmly back to the tiers, like a popular hero everyone was proud of — except myself. The spectators who had managed to get past the guards were suddenly taking firm hold of me and lifting me up and I was carried back with the thunderous applause still echoing in my ears.

  The applause went on and on, but a half hour later I could no longer hear it, for I was out of the stadium and threading my way through a maze of narrow streets toward the building where I had spent the night.

  CHAPTER 15

  The street did not seem quite the same when I came to it and stared down its rubble-strewn length, and the building where I’d spent the night looked more bleak and desolate — perhaps because the sunlight was beginning to wane a little and the crumbling piles of masonry on both sides of it had a reddish, almost sanguinary look.

  But I was sure it was the right street, the right building. You can’t easily forget a building and a street where you’ve had a close brush with Death, and a woman you’d have trusted with your life has been guilty of treachery and betrayal.

  Two women — and one had gone out of my life almost as quickly as she’d entered it and the other had stayed with me and not gone out of my life at all. But I’d lost them both in different ways, because when a woman is no longer at your side and you don’t know what has become of her, you’ve lost her.

  Would I find them both here, Claire and the man who had promised to protect her? If he hadn’t been overconfident and the promise had been kept the nightmare would be over for an hour or a day, with no guarantee we’d be spared another one. But if he’d failed, if the Security Police had blasted him down, the nightmare would never lift, for Claire would be lost to me forever and I would never know what had become of her.

  The street was deserted, but I paused for an instant before entering the building to make absolutely sure that I hadn’t been followed. A few feet to the right of me a gigantic rat scurried into a crevice in the masonry and bluebottle flies were making a buzzing sound where the pavement sloped to a patch of exposed soil. A dead starling lay on its back in the middle of the unpaved patch, its plumage still iridescently gleaming and the flies were just settling down over it.

  On Venus Base there were no starlings, dead or alive — or rats either, for that matter. It was of no great importance but when a man is under tremendous tension, thoughts which are ordinarily trivial and meaningless seem to take on an obscure, half-mysterious significance.

  Perhaps it is the pulse of nature, of all life everywhere, that we become aware of at such moments, making us realize how close is the link between living and dying, and how little basic difference there is between a man with the blood warm in his veins and a dead starling.

  I ascended the stairs slowly, because there is a time for haste and a time when it is better not to hurry. There are disappointments so bitter that few men can endure them without crying out in torment, and it is well to steel yourself in advance when such a disappointment may be awaiting you. So I climbed the stairs slowly, step by step, and the nearer I drew to the floor above the less sure I became that I would ever see Claire again.

  She opened her eyes then and looked at me. Her arms went around my shoulders and her breathing quickened and there was no need for words between us to make us aware that we were alone in a miraculously intimate way. Not only was the world shut out, it had ceased to exist. We were the world, as all lovers are when a blazing intensity of emotion enables them to create a new universe of light and fire.

  She shivered a little, tilting her head back and opening her lips as I loosened the gold clasp at her shoulder and parted the outer garment which she had worn on awakening in the Emotional Illusion Therapy shop and never taken off.

  I removed it now, with fingers that trembled a little and let it fall to the floor.

  “Darling,” I whispered. “My life and my bride …”

  I need not have feared that there was a metal band under the garment and that her body was not as I had hoped it would be.

  She was all woman.

  *****

  Later, as she was putting the garment back on again, her eyes were shining as she reclothed the beautiful body that had been made for me alone.

  She spoke then, for the first time. “He told me that you would not be killed. He could not wait here with me, because there are others who must be protected, and barely time to make sure that we will not be in danger again. But he told me that you would come back and I would be safe here if I locked the door and waited for you without making a sound.”

  She smiled then. She had never before smiled, in all the dreams of my youth; and I had never fully realized just how beautiful a biogenetic norm woman could look when the universe became all light and fire, and every barrier to complete fulfillment had turned into a gateway to the stars.

  “I would have locked the door but the key would not turn. I would have kept on trying to turn it, but I was so afraid that you would never return that what happened to me seemed not to matter very much.”

  She paused, as if searching in her mind for just the right words to make clear something she feared would seem incomprehensible. I knew exactly why people will sometimes feel that safeguarding themselves can be postponed, but I let her go on.

  “You asked me to trust him and I did. But how could he be sure that you would not be killed? And if you did not return I would have died too. And I stopped trying to turn the key because I had begun to die a little and when you are dying you do not always try very hard to stay alive. You do not really want to die. But you are not sure that life is any better than letting yourself die, because when you are dead there is no longer any torment. I did not intend to stop trying. But I was in such torment that I had to lie down and close my eyes and let myself die a little more. I thought if I did that I migh
t find the strength to turn the key. So much of me would have died that the torment would not have been so great —”

  I nodded. “I know how it feels to die that way,” I said. “You don’t have to explain. There isn’t a very wide gulf between sleep and death and you needed the help of both. I felt the same kind of torment coming up the stairs, not knowing whether I’d find you here or not. Maybe that’s why I found the strength to turn the key.”

  “The door was still open, so you must have turned it after you came into the room,” she said. “I am glad that you did that. You were locking out the world because you wanted to be completely alone with me. That’s why you turned the key.”

  “I was locking out the kind of world you find in the ruins,” I said. “I was locking out the Big Brain, and the monitors. Well, yes — I was locking out all of the other worlds as well.”

  “Even Venus Base?” she asked.

  “Even Venus Base,” I said.

  I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t said one word to her about my two years on Venus Base. And there was so much that she would have to know, because if we lived to see another sunrise I’d be taking her there.

  The knocking wasn’t very loud and for a moment I wasn’t sure that another flurry of wind hadn’t swirled up the stairs and caused the door to creak a little on its rusty hinges, for sometimes just a creaking can sound like a succession of swiftly repeated knocks.

  But I wasn’t left long in doubt. The knocking became louder and more insistent and a voice called out with sharp impatience. “You may as well let me in. The Security Police will be here in a moment, so you have nothing to gain by keeping the door locked. If you’re wise, you’ll listen to what I have to say. Or would you prefer to wait until the police get here and break the lock?”

  If it had been a voice I had failed to recognize I would not have opened the door. But it was a voice I had heard in the vault amidst the hum of the Big Brain’s computation units and the night before whispering to me between sleeping and waking. It was the voice of a woman I had struck in anger, because she had violated a trust by using another woman as a pawn and had been guilty of a double betrayal.