“Of course I knew it,” the robot-confessor said. “But my powers and duties are strictly defined. I sentence according to evidence, not intuition. By law, the robot-confessors must weigh only the concrete evidence which is put before them. They must, when in doubt, sentence. In fact, the mere presence of a man before me charged with murder must be taken as a strong presumption of his guilt.”
“Was there evidence against me?”
“Yes.”
“Who gave it?”
“I cannot reveal his name.”
“You must!” Barrent said. “Times are changing on Earth. The prisoners are coming back. Did you know that?”
“I expected it,” the robot-confessor said.
“I must have the informer’s name,” Barrent said. He took the needlebeam out of his pocket and advanced toward the panel.
“A machine cannot be coerced,” the robot-confessor told him.
“Give me the name!” Barrent shouted.
“I should not, for your own good. The danger would be too great. Believe me, Will.…”
“The name!”
“Very well. You will find the informer at Thirty-five Maple Street. But I earnestly advise you not to go there. You will be killed. You simply do not know—”
Barrent pressed the trigger, and the narrow beam scythed through the panel. Lights flashed and faded as he cut through the intricate wiring. At last all the lights were dead, and a faint gray smoke came from the panel.
Barrent left the booth. He put the needlebeam back in his pocket and walked to Maple Street.
* * * *
He had been here before. He knew this street, set upon a hill, rising steeply between oak and maple trees. Those lampposts were old friends, that crack in the pavement was an ancient landmark. Here were the houses, heavy with familiarity. They seemed to lean expectantly toward him, like spectators waiting for the final act of an almost forgotten drama.
He stood in front of 35 Maple Street. The silence which surrounded that plain white-shuttered house struck him as ominous. He took the needlebeam out of his pocket, looking for a reassurance he knew he could not find. Then he walked up the neat flagstones and tried the front door. It opened. He stepped inside.
He made out the dim shades of lamps and furniture, the dull gleam of a painting on the wall, a piece of statuary on an ebony pedestal. Needlebeam in hand, he stepped into the next room.
And came face to face with the informer.
Staring at the informer’s face, Barrent remembered. In an overpowering flood of memory he saw himself, a little boy, entering the closed classroom. He heard again the soothing hum of machinery, watched the pretty lights blink and flash, heard the insinuating machine voice whisper in his ear. At first, the voice filled him with horror; what it suggested was unthinkable. Then, slowly, he became accustomed to it, and accustomed to all the strange things that happened in the closed classroom.
He learned. The machines taught on deep, unconscious levels. The machines intertwined their lessons with the basic drives, weaving a pattern of learned behavior with the life instinct. They taught, then blocked off conscious knowledge of the lessons, sealed it—and fused it.
What had he been taught? For the social good, you must be your own policeman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crime which might conceivably be yours.
The face of the informer stared impassively at him. It was Barrent’s own face, reflected back from a mirror on the wall.
He had informed on himself. Standing with the gun in his hand that day, looking down at the murdered man, learned unconscious processes had taken over. The presumption of guilt had been too great for him to resist, the similarity to guilt had turned into guilt itself. He had walked to the robot-confessor’s booth, and there he had given complete and damning evidence against himself, had indicted himself on the basis of probability.
The robot-confessor had passed the obligatory sentence and Barrent had left the booth. Well-trained in the lessons of the classroom, he had taken himself into custody, had gone to the nearest thought-control center in Trenton. Already a partial amnesia had taken place, keyed to and triggered by the lessons of the closed classroom.
The skilled android technicians in the thought-control center had labored hard to complete this amnesia, to obliterate any remnants of memory. As a standard safeguard against any possible recovering of his memory, they had implanted a logical construct of his crime beneath the conscious level. As the regulations required, this construct contained an implication of the far-reaching power of Earth.
When the job was completed, an automatized Barrent had marched out of the center, taken a special expressway to the prison ship depot, boarded the prison ship, entered his cell, and closed the door and left Earth behind him. Then he had slept until the checkpoint had been passed, after which the newly arrived guards awakened the prisoners for disembarkation on Omega.…
Now, staring at his own face in the mirror, the last of the conscious lessons of the classroom became conscious:
The lessons of the closed classroom must never be consciously known by the individual. If they become conscious the human organism must perform an immediate act of self-destruction.
Now he saw why his conquest of Earth had been so easy; it was because he had conquered nothing. Earth needed no security forces, for the policeman and the executioner were implanted in every man’s mind. Beneath the surface of Earth’s mild and pleasant culture was a self-perpetuating robot civilization. An awareness of that civilization was punishable by death.
And here, at this moment, the real struggle for Earth began.
Learned behavior patterns intertwined with basic life drives forced Barrent to raise the needlebeam, to point it toward his head. This was what the robot-confessor had tried to warn him about, and what the mutant girl had skrenned. The younger Barrent, conditioned to absolute and mindless conformity, had to kill himself.
The older Barrent who had spent time on Omega fought that blind urge. A schizophrenic Barrent fought himself. The two parts of him battled for possession of the weapon, for control of the body, for ownership of the mind.
The needlebeam’s movement stopped inches from his head. The muzzle wavered. Then slowly, the new Omegan Barrent, Barrent2, forced the weapon away.
His victory was short-lived. For now the lessons of the closed classroom took over, forcing Barrent2 into a contrasurvival struggle with the implacable and death-desiring Barrent1.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Conditioning took over and flung the fighting Barrents backward through subjective time, to those stress points in the past where death had been near, where the temporal life fabric had been weakened, where a predisposition toward death had already been established. Conditioning forced Barrent2 to re-experience those moments. But this time, the danger was augmented by the full force of the malignant half of his personality—by the murderous informer, Barrent1.
* * * *
Barrent2 stood under glaring lights on the blood-stained sands of the Arena, a sword in his hand. It was the time of the Omegan Games. Coming at him was the Saunus, a heavily armored reptile with the leering face of Barrent1. Barrent2 severed the creature’s tail, and it changed into three trichomotreds, rat-sized, Barrent-faced, with the dispositions of rabid wolverines. He killed two, and the third grinned and bit his left hand to the bone. He killed it, and watched Barrent1’s blood leak into the soggy sand.…
* * * *
Three ragged men sat laughing on a bench, and a girl handed him a small gun. “Luck,” she said. “I hope you know how to use this.” Barrent nodded his thanks before he noticed that the girl was not Moera; she was the skrenning mutant who had predicted his death. Still, he moved into the street and faced the three Hadjis.
Two of the men were mild-faced strangers. The third, Barrent1, stepped forward and quickly brought his gun into firing position. Barrent2 flung himself to the ground and pressed the trigger of his unfamiliar weapon. He felt it vibrate in his hand an
d saw Hadji Barrent’s head and shoulders turn black and begin to crumble. Before he could take aim again, his gun was wrenched violently from his hand. Barrent1’s dying shot had creased the end of the muzzle.
Desperately he dived for the weapon, and as he rolled toward it he saw the second man, now wearing the Barrent1 face, take careful aim. Barrent2 felt pain flash through his arm, already torn by the trichomotred’s teeth. He managed to shoot this Barrent1, and through a haze of pain faced the third man, now also Barrent1. His arm was stiffening rapidly, but he forced himself to press the trigger.…
* * * *
You’re playing their game, Barrent2 told himself. The death-conditioning will wear you down, will kill you. You must see through it, get past it. It isn’t really happening, it’s in your mind.…
But there was no time to think. He was in a large, circular, high-ceilinged room of stone in the cellars of the Department of Justice. It was the Trial by Ordeal. Rolling across the floor toward him was a glistening black machine shaped like a half-sphere, standing almost four feet high. It came at him, and in the pattern of red, green, and amber lights he could see the hated face of Barrent.
Now his enemy was in its ultimate form: the invariant robot consciousness, as false and stylized as the conditioned dreams of Earth. The Barrent1 machine extruded a single slender tentacle with a white light winking at the end of it. As it approached, the tentacle withdrew, and in its place appeared a jointed metal arm ending in a knife-edge. Barrent2 dodged, and heard the knife scrape against the stone.
It isn’t what you think it is, Barrent2 told himself. It isn’t a machine, and you are not back on Omega. This is only half of yourself you are fighting, this is nothing but a deadly illusion.
But he couldn’t believe it. The Barrent machine was coming at him again, its metal hide glistening with a foul green substance which Barrent2 recognized immediately as Contact Poison. He broke into a sprint, trying to stay away from the fatal touch.
It isn’t fatal, he told himself.
Neutralizer washed over the metal surface, clearing away the poison. The machine tried to ram him. Barrent tried half-heartedly to push it aside. It crashed into him with stunning force, and he could feel ribs splintering.
It isn’t real! You’re letting a conditioned reflex talk you to death! You aren’t on Omega! You’re on Earth, in your own home, staring into a mirror!
But the pain was real, and the clubbed metal arm felt real as it crashed against his shoulder. Barrent staggered away.
He felt horror, not at dying, but at dying too soon, before he could warn the Omegans of this ultimate danger planted deep in their own minds. There was no one else to warn of the catastrophe that would strike each man as he recovered his own specific memories of Earth. To his best knowledge, no one had experienced this and lived. If he could live through it, countermeasures could be taken, counterconditioning could be set up.
He pulled himself to his feet. Coached since childhood in social responsibility, he thought of it now. He couldn’t allow himself to die when his knowledge was vital to Omega.
This is not a real machine.
He repeated it to himself as the Barrent machine revved up, picked up speed, and hurtled toward him from the far side of the room. He forced himself to see beyond the machine, to see the patient droning lessons of the classroom which had created this monster in his mind.
This is not a real machine.
He believed it.…
And swung his fist into the hated face reflected in the metal.
There was a moment of dazzling pain, and then he lost consciousness. When he came to, he was alone in his own home on Earth. His arm and shoulder ached, and several of his ribs seemed to be broken. On his left hand he bore the stigmata of the trichomotred’s bite.
But with his cut and bleeding right hand he had smashed the mirror. He had shattered it and Barrent1 utterly and forever.
ASK A FOOLISH QUESTION
Answerer was built to last as long as was necessary—which was quite long, as some races judge time, and not long at all, according to others. But to Answerer, it was just long enough.
As to size, Answerer was large to some and small to others. He could be viewed as complex, although some believed that he was really very simple.
Answerer knew that he was as he should be. Above and beyond all else, he was The Answerer. He Knew.
Of the race that built him, the less said the better. They also Knew, and never said whether they found the knowledge pleasant.
They built Answerer as a service to less-sophisticated races, and departed in a unique manner. Where they went only Answerer knows.
Because Answerer knows everything.
Upon his planet, circling his sun, Answerer sat. Duration continued, long, as some judge duration, short as others judge it. But as it should be, to Answerer.
Within him were the Answers. He knew the nature of things, and why things are as they are, and what they are, and what it all means.
Answerer could answer anything, provided it was a legitimate question. And he wanted to! He was eager to!
How else should an Answerer be?
What else should an Answerer do?
So he waited for creatures to come and ask.
* * * *
“How do you feel, sir?” Morran asked, floating gently over to the old man.
“Better,” Lingman said, trying to smile. No-weight was a vast relief. Even though Morran had expended an enormous amount of fuel, getting into space under minimum acceleration, Lingman’s feeble heart hadn’t liked it. Lingman’s heart had balked and sulked, pounded angrily against the brittle rib-case, hesitated and sped up. It seemed for a time as though Lingman’s heart was going to stop, out of sheer pique.
But no-weight was a vast relief, and the feeble heart was going again.
Morran had no such problems. His strong body was built for strain and stress. He wouldn’t experience them on this trip, not if he expected old Lingman to live.
“I’m going to live,” Lingman muttered, in answer to the unspoken question. “Long enough to find out.” Morran touched the controls, and the ship slipped into sub-space like an eel into oil.
“We’ll find out,” Morran murmured. He helped the old man unstrap himself. “We’re going to find the Answerer!”
Lingman nodded at his young partner. They had been reassuring themselves for years. Originally it had been Lingman’s project. Then Morran, graduating from Cal Tech, had joined him. Together they had traced the rumors across the solar system. The legends of an ancient humanoid race who had known the answer to all things, and who had built Answerer and departed.
“Think of it,” Morran said. “The answer to everything!” A physicist, Morran had many questions to ask Answerer. The expanding universe; the binding force of atomic nuclei; novae and supernovae; planetary formation; red shift, relativity and a thousand others.
“Yes,” Lingman said. He pulled himself to the vision plate and looked out on the bleak prairie of the illusory sub-space. He was a biologist and an old man. He had two questions.
What is life?
What is death?
* * * *
After a particularly long period of hunting purple, Lek and his friends gathered to talk. Purple always ran thin in the neighborhood of multiple-cluster stars—why, no one knew—so talk was definitely in order.
“Do you know,” Lek said, “I think I’ll hunt up this Answerer.” Lek spoke the Ollgrat language now, the language of imminent decision.
“Why?” Ilm asked him, in the Hvest tongue of light banter. “Why do you want to know things? Isn’t the job of gathering purple enough for you?”
“No,” Lek said, still speaking the language of imminent decision. “It is not.” The great job of Lek and his kind was the gathering of purple. They found purple imbedded in many parts of the fabric of space, minute quantities of it. Slowly, they were building a huge mound of it. What the mound was for, no one knew.
“I s
uppose you’ll ask him what purple is?” Ilm asked, pushing a star out of his way and lying down.
“I will,” Lek said. “We have continued in ignorance too long. We must know the true nature of purple, and its meaning in the scheme of things. We must know why it governs our lives.” For this speech Lek switched to Ilgret, the language of incipient knowledge.
Ilm and the others didn’t try to argue, even in the tongue of arguments. They knew that the knowledge was important. Ever since the dawn of time, Lek, Ilm and the others had gathered purple. Now it was time to know the ultimate answers to the universe—what purple was, and what the mound was for.
And of course, there was the Answerer to tell them. Everyone had heard of the Answerer, built by a race not unlike themselves, now long departed.
“Will you ask him anything else?” Ilm asked Lek.
“I don’t know,” Lek said. “Perhaps I’ll ask about the stars. There’s really nothing else important.” Since Lek and his brothers had lived since the dawn of time, they didn’t consider death. And since their numbers were always the same, they didn’t consider the question of life.
But purple? And the mound?
“I go!” Lek shouted, in the vernacular of decision-to-fact.
“Good fortune!” his brothers shouted back, in the jargon of greatest-friendship.
Lek strode off, leaping from star to star.
* * * *
Alone on his little planet, Answerer sat, waiting for the Questioners. Occasionally he mumbled the answers to himself. This was his privilege. He Knew.
But he waited, and the time was neither too long nor too short, for any of the creatures of space to come and ask.
* * * *
There were eighteen of them, gathered in one place.
“I invoke the rule of eighteen,” cried one. And another appeared, who had never before been, born by the rule of eighteen.
“We must go to the Answerer,” one cried. “Our lives are governed by the rule of eighteen. Where there are eighteen, there will be nineteen. Why is this so?”
No one could answer.
“Where am I?” asked the newborn nineteenth. One took him aside for instruction.
The Robert Sheckley Megapack Page 18