The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection

by Harry Harrison

  Mark Forer, obviously. Just like in the paintings. Except that plenty of cables and wires ran from it to a nearby collection of apparatus. Its dials glowed with electronic life and a TV pickup swiveled in my direction. I walked over to stand before it and resisted the compelling desire to bow. And just what does one say to an intelligent machine? The silence lengthened and I began to feel ridiculous. I cleared my throat.

  “Mark Forer, I presume?”

  “Of course. Were you expecting someone else … krrk!”

  The voice was grating and coarse and the words trailed off with a harsh grating sound. At the same time there was a puff of smoke from a panel on the front and a hatch dropped open. My temper snapped.

  “Great! Really wonderful. For hundreds of years this electronic know-it-all sits here with the wisdom of the ages locked in its memory banks. Then the second I talk to it it explodes and expires. It is like the punch line of a bad joke—”

  There was a rattle from behind and I leaped and turned, dropped into a defensive position. But it was only a little rubber-tired robot bristling with mechanical extensions. It wheeled up in front of Mark and stopped. A claw-tipped arm shot out, plunging into the open panel. It clicked and whirred and withdrew a circuit board which it threw onto the floor. While this was happening another circuit board was emerging from a slot on the robot’s upper surface. The grasping claw seized this and delicately slid into the opening before it. Mark’s panel snapped shut as the robot spun about and trundled away.

  “No,” Mark Forer said in a deep and resonant voice, “I did not explode and expire. My voice simulation board did. Shorted out. Been a number of centuries since I last used it. You are the offworlder, James diGriz.”

  “I am. For a machine in an underground vault you keep up with things pretty well, Mark.”

  “No problem, Jim—since you appear to enjoy a first name basis. Because all of my input is electronic it really doesn’t matter where my central processor is.”

  “Right, hadn’t thought of that.” I stepped aside as a broom and brush bristling robot rushed up and swept the discarded circuit board into its bin. “Well, Mark, if you know who I am, then you certainly know what is happening topside.”

  “I certainly do. Haven’t seen so much excitement in the last thousand years.”

  “Oh, are you enjoying it?” I was beginning to get angry at this cold and enigmatic electronic intelligence. I was a little shocked when it chuckled with appreciative laughter.

  “Temper, temper, Jim. I’ve cut back in the voice feedback emotion circuits for you. I stopped using them centuries ago when I found that the true believers preferred an ex cathedra voice. Or are you more partial to women?” It added in a warm contralto.

  “Stay male, if you please, it seems more natural somehow. Though why I should associate sex with a machine I have no idea. Does it make a difference to you?”

  “Not in the slightest. You may refer to me as he, she or it. Sex is of no importance to me.”

  “Well it is to us humans—and I’ll bet you miss it!”

  “Nonsense. You can’t miss what you never had. Do you wake up at night yearning helplessly for photoreceptors in your fingertips?”

  It was a well-made point: old Mark here was no dummy. But fascinating as the chitchat was, it was just about time I got to the point of this visit.

  “Mark—I have come here for a very important reason.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “You’ve heard the broadcasts, you know what is happening up there. That murdering moron Zennor is going to kill ten of your faithful followers in the morning. What do you intend to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing!” I lost my temper and kicked the front of the burnished panel. “You invented Individual Mutualism and foisted it upon the galaxy. You taught the faithful and brought them here—and now you are going to stand by and watch them die?”

  “Knock off the cagal, Jim,” it said warmly. “Try sticking to the truth. I published a political philosophy. People read it, got enthusiastic, applied it and liked it. They brought me here, not the other way around. I have emotions, just as you do, but I don’t let them interfere with logic and truth. So cool it, kid, and let’s get back to square one.”

  I moved aside as the broom-robot rushed up again, extended a little damp mop and polished off the scuff mark on Mark’s housing that I had made with my shoe. I took a deep breath and calmed down because really, losing my temper would accomplish nothing at all.

  “Right you are, Mark, square one. People are going to be killed up there. Are you going to do anything about it?”

  “There is not much I can do physically. And everything political or philosophical is in my book. The citizens up there know as much about IM as I do.”

  “So you are just going to sit there and listen to the sizzle of your electrons and let them die.”

  “People have died before for their beliefs.”

  “Wonderful. Well I believe in living for mine. And I am going to do something—even if you do not.”

  “What do you intend to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. Do you have advice for me?”

  “About what?”

  “About saving lives, that’s what. About ending the invasion and polishing off Zennor …”

  And then I had it. I didn’t need to swap political arguments with Mark—I just had to use its intelligence. If it had memory banks thousands of years old it certainly had the knowledge I needed. And I still had the electronic spy bird!

  “Well, Mark old machine, you could help me. Just a bit of information.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you know the spatial coordinates of this system and this planet?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you give me a little printout of them, soonest! So I can send an FTL message to the League Navy for help.”

  “I don’t see why I should do that.”

  I lost my temper. “You don’t see …! Listen you moronic machine, I’m just asking for a bit of information that will save lives—and you don’t see …”

  “Jim, my new offworlder friend. Do not lose your temper so quickly. Bad for the blood pressure. Let me finish my statement, if I might. I was going to add that this information would be redundant. You sent an FTL message yourself, just after you retrieved the corvine-disguised transmitter.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “I sent an FTL message?” I said, my thoughts stumbling about in small circles.

  “You did.”

  “But—but—but—” I stopped and seized myself by the mental neck and gave it a good shaking. Logic, Jim, time for logic. “The recorded message from Captain Varod said that I would need the coordinates to send an FTL message.”

  “That was obviously a lie.”

  “Saying it was a radio message was a lie too?”

  “Of course.”

  I paced back and forth and the TV pickup followed me as I moved. What was going on? Why had Varod lied to me about the signal? And if he had received it where was he? If he had got the signal and hadn’t sent his fleet or whatever, then he was the one who must take the responsibility for the murders. The League did not go in for that sort of thing. But Mark might know what was happening. I spun about.

  “Speak, ancient brain-in-box!! Has the League Navy arrived or is it on the way?”

  “I’m sorry, Jim, I just don’t know. The last orbiting telescope ran out of power centuries ago. I know no more than you do about this. All I can surmise is that we are very distant from these rescuers you expect.”

  I stopped pacing and was suddenly very tired. It was going to be another of those days. I looked around the room. “You don’t have an old box or something that I can sit on?”

  “Oh dear, I do apologize. I’m not being a very good host, am I? Out of training.”

  While he was talking a powered sofa came trundling in and stopped behind me. I dropped into it. It was hard to think of Mark as an it, not with t
he voice and all.

  “Many thanks, very soft.” I smacked my lips and it got the hint.

  “Please make yourself comfortable. Something to drink perhaps?”

  “I wouldn’t say no. Just to stimulate thinking, you realize.”

  “I’m not too well stocked at the present moment. There is some wine, but it must be four hundred years old at least. Vintage with a vengeance, you might say.”

  “We can only try!”

  The table stopped at my elbow and I blew dust from the bottle, then activated the electronic corkscrew which managed to extract the truly ancient cork without breaking it. I poured and sniffed and gasped.

  “Never—never smelled anything like that before!”

  And it tasted even better. All the sniffing and tasting did clear the mental air a bit. I felt better able to handle the problems of the day.

  “I don’t know the time,” I said.

  “Over sixteen hours to go before the promised executions.” Mark was anything but stupid. I sipped the wine and ran over the possibilities.

  “I sent the message—so the Navy has to be on its way here. But we can’t count upon their arrival to save the day. The only grace note to all this is that at least I know I won’t be stranded on this planet forever. Now what can I do to save lives? Since obviously neither you nor your IMers are going to lift a finger.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Jim. There are a number of conferences going on right now in the city. People are returning in large numbers.”

  “Are they knuckling under? Going back to work?”

  “Not at all. A protest is being organized, as to what shape it will take—that is still being discussed.”

  “How do you know all this? Spies?”

  “Not quite. I simply tap all the communication circuits and monitor all phone calls. I have subunits looking for keywords and making records for me.”

  “Are you tapping the Nevenkebla circuits as well?”

  “Yes. Very interesting.”

  “You speak the language?”

  “I speak every language. Fourteen thousand six hundred and twelve of them.”

  “Jamen, en ting er i hvert fald siker. Du taller ikke dansk.”

  “Og hvorfor sd ikke det? Dansk er da et smukt, melodisk sprog.”

  Pretty good—I thought that I was the only one who had ever heard of Danish. But there was one that I was sure Mark had never heard of. An ancient language called Latin. Spoken only by a secret society so secret I dare not say more about it.

  “Nonne cognoscis linguam Latinam?”

  “Loquarne linguam Latinam?” Mark answered in a decidedly snotty manner. “Quid referam in singulorum verborum delectu, in coniunctorum compositione, et structura, in casuum atque temporum discriminatione, in certarum concinnitate formularum, in incisorum membrorumque conformatione, in modulandis circumdictionibus, in elegantiarum cuiusque generis accurata, elaborataque frequentatione quantus turn sim et quam purus putus Ciceronianus? Ex qua Cicero mortuus est, meis verbis nihil latinius. Memoria vero libros omnium auctorum latinorum tarn veterum quam recentiorum et neotericorum continet. Voces peregrinae et barbarae quae latinis eloquiis inseruntur, omino mihi notae sunt. Nae tu es baro et balatro nam ego studeo partes diffidles cognoscere quas scholastici doctores gestant, latebras singulas auxilio mei ipsius cerno. Doctissimi enimvero homines omnino universitatum modernarum me rogant sensus omnium talium verborum.”

  I could only gape at this as it hummed in electronic joy, very proud of itself. “Did you catch all those nuances, Jim? About what a pure Ciceronian I am? Each word carefully chosen, the composition of sentence structure, the contrast of cases and tenses, phrases and clauses …”

  He, or rather it, went on for quite a while like that. Bragging. Chatting away with Mark I tended to anthropomorphize him. It. Her. Whatever. This wasn’t a human but an intelligent machine with abilities far beyond anything I had ever imagined before. But how could I put them to work?

  “Mark, tell me. Will you help me?”

  “In any way I can.”

  I sipped more wine and felt its healing and inspirational powers doing good things to me. Memory. Something that had happened earlier today.

  “Mark—I saw two soldiers desert today. Are there other newly arrived deserters in the city?”

  “A goodly number of them. One hundred and twenty one in all, wait … sorry, one twenty-two. Another just arrived.”

  “Any of them armed?”

  “You mean equipped with weapons? All of them. They have all deserted from patrols in the city.”

  But would they use their guns? And if so, what could I do with them? An idea was taking shape. Meet fire with fire. And they just might do it. There was only one way to find out. I poured another bit of wine and turned to my electronic host.

  “I would like to have all of the deserters meet me in some central place. With their weapons. Can you arrange that?”

  He was silent for long seconds. Looking for a way to back out of his offer? But I had underestimated him.

  “All done,” he said. “The people who are hiding them will escort them after dark to the sports center. Which is very close to the site selected for the murders.”

  “You are one step ahead of me.”

  “I should hope so. Since I am incredibly more intelligent than you are. Now, since there are some hours to go before your meeting, would you repay the favor and have a good chat with me? I have been rather out of touch with galactic matters for a thousand years or more. How are things going?”

  It was a strange afternoon and early evening. His memory, as it should be, was quite formidable and I learned a number of interesting things. But there was one fact which he could not tell me since he had been born? built? wired? well after the spread of mankind through the galaxy.

  “Like you, Jim, all I know are myths and ancient memories. If there was an original planetary home of mankind, called Dirt or Earth or something like that, its location is nowhere in my memory banks.”

  “Well, just thought that I would ask. But I think I better be going. Nice to talk to you.”

  “The same. Drop in any time.”

  “I’ll take you up on that. Would you mind turning off the lights when I get to the top of the stairs?”

  “Not a problem. This place is pretty well automated as you might imagine.”

  “No problem with the electricity supply?”

  “You bet your sweet chunk there isn’t. Survival was the first emotion I learned. City power supply, standby generators, battery backup, a couple of fuel cells and a fusion generator that can be fired up in ten minutes. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I won’t. So long.”

  I climbed the long flight of stairs and when I touched the door all the lights were extinguished. I pushed it open and peeked out: no patrols that I could see. When I threw it wide and exited there were Neebe and Stirner sitting on the bench, waiting for me.

  “Aren’t you worried about the enemy finding you here after curfew?”

  “Not a problem,” Stirner said. “So many men have deserted that all patrols appear to have been canceled. All of the military are either on the base or in the municipal building. Now—please tell us. You have spoken with Mark Forer?” They both leaned forward in tense anticipation.

  “Spoken with him and enjoyed his hospitality. And he’s got a couple of cases of wine left that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I would believe anything about Mark Forer,” Stirner said and Neebe nodded agreement. “But I am sorry that he did not give you a solution to the problem of the killings.”

  I blinked rapidly. “How do you know that? I didn’t say anything about it.”

  “You did not have to. Mark Forer knows that it is a problem we must deal with ourselves. And so we shall. A decision has been reached. All in the city will assemble in the killing place tomorrow, an individual decision by each one. We will stand in front of the guns.”

  “A noble gesture—but it won’t work. They w
ill just shoot you down.”

  “Then others will take our places. There is no end to nonresistance. They will keep shooting until they run out of charges for their weapons or take despair at the murders. I am sure that they are not all moral villains like their leader.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. But there may be an alternative. With Mark’s help, we are on a first-name basis you will be happy to hear, I have arranged a meeting of all the deserters in the city. If you will kindly lead me to the sports center we will see if my plan might perhaps be a better and more practical one.”

  It was a pleasant stroll, the streets of the city empty of fear for the first time since the invaders had landed. We met other groups going in the same direction, each of them accompanying one or two armed deserters. Laughter and smiles, they were cheerful now that they were away from the army—but would they go along with any plan that might jeopardize that newfound freedom? There was only one way to find out.

  The sports center had an indoor stadium with a wrestling ring that held us all. The escaped soldiers sat in the lower rows while interested civilian spectators were ranked above and behind them. I climbed into the ring and waited until they were all seated, then grabbed the microphone. The audience rustled into silence.

  “Fellow ex-draftees, newly arrived deserters, I welcome you. Most of you don’t know me …”

  “Everyone knows you, Jim!” a voice called out. “You’re the guy almost throttled the general.”

  “Better luck next time!”

  I smiled and waited until the cheers and shouts had died down.

  “Thanks guys, it is nice to be appreciated. Now I have to ask you to help. Our dear general, cagal-kopf Zennor, plans to shoot down some unarmed civilians tomorrow. These are the people who have helped you and your buddies escape, who have extended friendship to us all—and a happy home here if we want it. Now we have to help them. And I am going to tell you how.

  “We are going to take these guns that we have been trained to use and aim them at Zennor and his mob and threaten to waste them if they pull any triggers. It will be a standoff—and we might not get away with it. But it is something that we have to do.”