by Brian Aldiss
(At this point, Professor Pirenian, of the National Security Council, broke in with a question.)
PIRENIAN: Why didn’t you and Dr Kent merely send another man to intercept this one? Yours, by the machine, could obviously set the dials to get there first, thus snatching the first one back before he could do any harm.
DR CARNOT: We thought of that, even in the few minutes we had. But suppose that this world vanished before we could cut in ahead of him? Believe me, the paradoxes are maddening; no amount of mathematical wrangling can settle them; only experiment. We couldn’t chance it; that’s all.
PIRENIAN: You’re right, of course. Maybe we should be glad, gentlemen, that Dr Carnot – and Dr Kent – were there instead of the rest of us!
DR CARNOT: You still don’t know the real danger. What I’ve said so far applies to an impulsive, random trip to the distant past, where the man had no specific intentions. But Michael Nauss did have a particular plan – a wild, crazy, and yet, in a way, magnificent conception. One that the public, or much of it, might foolishly support without realizing the consequences. I speak of this country, and people in Europe; not in Asia, for the most part. And he had set the vernier with perfect precision, which made his plan even more feasible.
JUDGE CLARK: What was he going to do?
DR CARNOT: According to his note, this man had taken with him a repeating rifle and five thousand rounds of exploding ammunition. His intention was nothing less than to arrive at Golgotha in time to rescue Jesus Christ from the Roman soldiers. In short, to prevent the crucifixion. And with a modern rifle, who can say he wouldn’t succeed? And then what? Then what? The implications are staggering. Disregarding the Christian dogma, which asserts Jesus had to die for our sins, what of the effect on the future, the entire stream of history, secular as well as religious? Maybe Jesus himself would have prevented this madman from saving him – but who can be sure? Yet, if you ask the man in the street, now, in this year 2015: Shall we save Jesus Christ from the cross? – what would he answer? Whose side would he take? Ours, or Michael Nauss’? That is why Dr Kent and I destroyed the machine; and why we face this court now. We believe the proceedings should not be released. The decision is yours. We made ours that night.
I Made You
WALTER M. MILLER, JR.
It had disposed of the enemy, and it was weary. It sat on the crag by night. Gaunt, frigid, wounded, it sat under the black sky and listened to the land with its feet, while only its dishlike ear moved in slow patterns that searched the surface of the land and the sky. The land was silent, airless. Nothing moved, except the feeble thing that scratched in the cave. It was good that nothing moved. It hated sound and motion. It was in its nature to hate them. About the thing in the cave it could do nothing until dawn. The thing muttered in the rocks –
‘Help me! Are you all dead? Can’t you hear me? This is Sawyer. Sawyer calling anybody, Sawyer calling anybody –’
The mutterings were irregular, without pattern. It filtered them out, refusing to listen. All was seeping cold. The sun was gone, and there had been near-blackness for two hundred and fifty hours, except for the dim light of the sky-orb which gave no food, and the stars by which it told the time.
It sat wounded on the crag and expected the enemy. The enemy had come charging into the world out of the unworld during the late afternoon. The enemy had come brazenly, with neither defensive manoeuvring nor offensive fire. It had destroyed them easily – first the big lumbering enemy that rumbled along on wheels, and then the small enemies that scurried away from the gutted hulk. It had picked them off one at a time, except for the one that crept into the cave and hid itself beyond a break in the tunnel.
It waited for the thing to emerge. From its vantage point atop the crag it could scan broken terrain for miles around, the craters and crags and fissures, the barren expanse of dust-flat that stretched to the west, and the squarish outlines of the holy place near the tower that was the centre of the world. The cave lay at the foot of a cliff to the south-east, only a thousand yards from the crag. It could guard the entrance to the cave with its small spitters, and there was no escape for the lingering trace of enemy.
It bore the mutterings of the hated thing even as it bore the pain of its wounds, patiently, waiting for a time of respite. For many sunrises there had been pain, and still the wounds were unrepaired. The wounds dulled some of its senses and crippled some of its activators. It could no longer follow the flickering beam of energy that would lead it safely into the unworld and across it to the place of creation. It could no longer blink out the pulses that reflected the difference between healer and foe. Now there was only foe.
‘Colonel Aubrey, this is Sawyer. Answer me! I’m trapped in a supply cache! I think the others are dead. It blasted us as soon as we came near. Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Listen! I’ve got only one cylinder of oxygen left, you hear? Colonel, answer me!’
Vibrations in the rock – nothing more – only a minor irritant to disturb the blessed stasis of the world it guarded. The enemy was destroyed, except for the lingering trace in the cave. The lingering trace was neutralized, however, and did not move.
Because of its wounds, it nursed a brooding anger. It could not stop the damage signals that kept firing from its wounded members, but neither could it accomplish the actions that the agonizing signals urged it to accomplish. It sat and suffered and hated on the crag.
It hated the night, for by night there was no food. Each day it devoured sun, strengthened itself for the long, long watch of darkness, but when dawn came, it was feeble again, and hunger was a fierce passion within. It was well, therefore, that there was peace in the night, that it might conserve itself and shield its bowels from the cold. If the cold penetrated the insulating layers, thermal receptors would begin firing warning signals, and agony would increase. There was much agony. And, except in time of battle, there was no pleasure, except in devouring sun.
To protect the holy place, to restore stasis to the world, to kill enemy – these were the pleasures of battle. It knew them.
And it knew the nature of the world. It had learned every inch of land out to the pain perimeter, beyond which it could not move. And it had learned the surface features of the demiworld beyond, learned them by scanning with its long-range senses. The world, the demiworld, the unworld – these were Outside, constituting the Universe.
‘Help me, help me, help me! This is Captain John Harbin Sawyer, Autocyber Corps, Instruction and Programming Section, currently of Salvage Expedition Lunar Sixteen. Isn’t anybody alive on the Moon? Listen! Listen to me! I’m sick. I’ve been here God knows how many days… in a suit. It stinks. Did you ever live in a suit for days? I’m sick. Get me out of here!’
The enemy’s place was unworld. If the enemy approached closer than the outer range, it must kill; this was a basic truth that it had known since the day of creation. Only the healers might move with impunity over all the land, but now the healers never came. It could no longer call them nor recognize them – because of the wound.
It knew the nature of itself. It learned of itself by introspecting damage, and by internal scanning. It alone was ‘being’. All else was of the outside. It knew its functions, its skills, its limitations. It listened to the land with its feet. It scanned the surface with many eyes. It tested the skies with a flickering probe. In the ground, it felt the faint seisms and random noise. On the surface, it saw the faint glint of starlight, the heat-loss from the cold terrain, and the reflected pulses from the tower. In the sky, it saw only stars, and heard only the pulse-echo from the faint orb of Earth overhead. It suffered the gnawings of ancient pain, and waited for the dawn.
After an hour, the thing began crawling in the cave. It listened to the faint scraping sounds that came through the rocks. It lowered a more sensitive pickup and tracked the sounds. The remnant of enemy was crawling softly towards the mouth of the cave. It turned a small spitter towards the black scar at the foot of the Earthlit cliff. It fired a b
right burst of tracers towards the cave, and saw them ricochet about the entrance in bright but noiseless streaks over the airless land.
‘You dirty greasy deadly monstrosity, let me alone! You ugly juggernaut, I’m Sawyer. Don’t you remember? I helped to train you ten years ago. You were a rookie under me… heh heh! Just a dumb autocyber rookie… with the firepower of a regiment. Let me go. Let me go!’
The enemy-trace crawled towards the entrance again. And again a noiseless burst of machine-gun fire spewed about the cave, driving the enemy fragment back. More vibrations in the rock –
‘I’m your friend. The war’s over. It’s been over for months… Earthmonths. Don’t you get it. Grumbler? “Grumbler” – we used to call you that back in your rookie days – before we taught you how to kill. Grumbler. Mobile autocyber fire control. Don’t you know your pappy, son?’
The vibrations were an irritant. Suddenly angry, it wheeled around on the crag, gracefully manoeuvring its massive bulk. Motors growling, it moved from the crag on to the hillside, turned again, and lumbered down the slope. It charged across the flatlands and braked to a halt fifty yards from the entrance to the cave. Dust geysers sprayed up about its caterpillars and fell like jets of water in the airless night. It listened again. All was silent in the cave.
‘Go ’way, sonny,’ quavered the vibrations after a time. ‘Let pappy starve in peace.’
It aimed the small spitter at the centre of the black opening and hosed two hundred rounds of tracers into the cave. It waited. Nothing moved inside. It debated the use of a radiation grenade, but its arsenal was fast depleting. It listened for a time, watching the cave, looming five times taller than the tiny flesh-thing that cowered inside. Then it turned and lumbered back across the flat to resume its watch from the crag. Distant motion, out beyond the limits of the demiworld, scratched feebly at the threshold of its awareness – but the motion was too remote to disturb.
The thing was scratching in the cave again.
‘I’m punctured, do you hear? I’m punctured. A shard of broken rock. Just a small leak, but a slap-patch won’t hold. My suit! Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Base control from Moonwagon Sixteen. Message for you, over. He he. Gotta observe procedure. I got shot! I’m punctured. Help!’
The thing made whining sounds for a time, then: ‘All right, it’s only my leg. I’ll pump the boot full of water and freeze it. So I lose a leg. Whatthe hell, take your time.’ The vibrations subsided into whining sounds again.
It settled again on the crag, its activators relaxing into a lethargy that was full of gnawing pain. Patiently it awaited the dawn.
*
The movement towards the south was increasing. The movement nagged at the outer fringes of the demiworld, until at last the movement became an irritant. Silently, a drill slipped down from its belly. The drill gnawed deep into the rock, then retracted. It slipped a sensitive pickup into the drill hole and listened carefully to the ground.
A faint purring in the rocks – mingled with the whining from the cave.
It compared the purring with recorded memories. It remembered similar purrings. The sound came from a rolling object far to the south. It tried to send the pulses that asked ‘Are you friend or foe?’ but the sending organ was inoperative. The movement, therefore, was enemy – but still beyond range of its present weapons.
Lurking anger, and expectation of battle. It stirred restlessly on the crag, but kept its surveillance of the cave. Suddenly there was disturbance on a new sensory channel, vibrations similar to those that came from the cave; but this time the vibrations came across the surface, through the emptiness, transmitted in the long-wave spectra.
‘Moonwagon Sixteen from Command Runabout, give us a call. Over.’
Then silence. It expected a response from the cave, at first – since it knew that one unit of enemy often exchanged vibratory patterns with another unit of enemy. But no answer came. Perhaps the long-wave energy could not penetrate the cave to reach the thing that cringed inside.
‘Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. What the devil happened to you? Can you read me? Over!’
Tensely it listened to the ground. The purring stopped for a time as the enemy paused. Minutes later the motion resumed.
It awoke an emissary ear twenty kilometers to the south-west, and commanded the ear to listen, and to transmit the patterns of the purring noise. Two soundings were taken, and from them it derived the enemy’s precise position and velocity. The enemy was proceeding to the north, into the edge of the demiworld. Lurking anger flared into active fury. It gunned its engines on the crag. It girded itself for battle.
‘Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. I assume your radio rig is inoperative. If you can hear us, get this: we’re proceeding north to five miles short of magnapult range. We’ll stop there and fire an autocyb rocket into zone Red-Red. The warhead’s a radio-to-sonar transceiver. If you’ve got a seismitter that’s working, the transceiver will act as a relay stage. Over.’
It ignored the vibratory pattern and rechecked its battle gear. It introspected its energy storage, and tested its weapon activators. It summoned an emissary eye and waited a dozen minutes while the eye crawled crablike from the holy place to take up a watch-post near the entrance of the cave. If the enemy remnant tried to emerge, the emissary eye would see, and report, and it could destroy the enemy remnant with a remote grenade catapult.
The purring in the ground was louder. Having prepared itself for the fray, it came down from the crag and grumbled southward at cruising speed. It passed the gutted hulk of the Moonwagon, with its team of overturned tractors. The detonation of the magnapult canister had broken the freight-car-sized vehicle in half. The remains of several two-legged enemy appurtenances were scattered about the area, tiny broken things in the pale Earthlight. Grumbler ignored them and charged relentlessly southward.
A sudden wink of light on the southern horizon! Then a tiny dot of flame arched upwards, traversing the heavens. Grumbler skidded to a halt and tracked its path. A rocket missile. It would fall somewhere in the east half of zone Red-Red. There was no time to prepare to shoot it down. Grumbler waited – and saw that the missile would explode harmlessly in a nonvital area.
Seconds later, the missile paused in flight, reversing direction and sitting on its jets. It dropped out of sight behind an outcropping. There was no explosion. Nor was there any activity in the area where the missile had fallen. Grumbler called an emissary ear, sent it migrating towards the impact point to listen, then continued south towards the pain perimeter.
‘Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout,’ came the long-wave vibrations. ‘We just shot the radio-seismitter relay into Red-Red. If you’re within five miles of it, you should be able to hear.’
Almost immediately, a response from the cave, heard by the emissary ear that listened to the land near the tower: ‘Thank God! He he he he – Oh, thank God!’
And simultaneously, the same vibratory pattern came in long-wave patterns from the direction of the missile-impact point. Grumbler stopped again, momentarily confused, angrily tempted to lob a magnapult canister across the broken terrain towards the impact point. But the emissary ear reported no physical movement from the area. The enemy to the south was the origin of the disturbances. If it removed the major enemy first, it could remove the minor disturbances later. It moved on to the pain perimeter, occasionally listening to the meaningless vibrations caused by the enemy.
‘Salvage Sixteen from Aubrey. I hear you faintly. Who is this, Carhill?’
‘Aubrey! A voice – A real voice – Or am I going nuts?’
‘Sixteen from Aubrey. Sixteen from Aubrey. Stop babbling and tell me who’s talking. What’s happening in there? Have you got Grumbler immobilized?’
Spasmodic choking was the only response.
‘Sixteen from Aubrey. Snap out of it! Listen, Sawyer, I know it’s you. Now get hold of yourself, man! What’s happened?’
‘Dead… they’re
all dead but me.’
‘STOP THAT IDIOTIC LAUGHING!’
A long silence, then, scarcely audible: ‘OK, I’ll hold on to myself. Is it really you, Aubrey?’
‘You’re not having hallucinations, Sawyer. We’re crossing zone Red in a runabout. Now tell me the situation. We’ve been trying to call you for days.’
‘Grumbler let us get ten miles into zone Red-Red, and then he clobbered us with a magnapult canister.’
‘Wasn’t your IFF working?’
‘Yes, but Grumbler’s isn’t! After he blasted the wagon, he picked off the other four that got out alive – He he he he… Did you ever see a Sherman tank chase a mouse, colonel?’
‘Cut it out, Sawyer! Another giggle out of you, and I’ll flay you alive.’
‘Get me out! My leg! Get me out!’
‘If we can. Tell me your present situation.’
‘My suit… I got a small puncture – Had to pump the leg full of water and freeze it. Now my leg’s dead. I can’t last much longer.’
‘The situation, Sawyer, the situation! Not your aches and pains.’
*
The vibrations continued, but Grumbler screened them out for a time. There was rumbling fury on an Earthlit hill.
It sat with its engines idling, listening to the distant movements of the enemy to the south. At the foot of the hill lay the pain perimeter; even upon the hilltop, it felt the faint twinges of warning that issued from the tower, thirty kilometres to the rear at the centre of the world. It was in communion with the tower. If it ventured beyond the perimeter, the communion would slip out-of-phase, and there would be blinding pain and detonation.