Shortly after noon, as Slant was gathering himself his midday meal, he heard a door open and close; he put down the orange he had been peeling and returned to the main room.
Haiger had returned. "Oh, there you are," he said as Slant emerged from the kitchen. "We have to leave; the tower isn't safe. Something's gone wrong with the frame; one of the beams has rusted through, and the whole thing could collapse. We're getting everybody out as fast as we can."
"Computer? I think I better go with him. I'll go straight to the top of one of the other towers and contact you from there."
"Negative. Cyborg unit will remain in present location."
"I can't; didn't you hear? The building's about to collapse!" He did not for a moment believe that to be true, but it was an admirable lie.
"Cyborg unit will remain in present location."
"Do you want me to get killed? You're not being rational!"
"Computer dysfunction remains within acceptable parameters. Cyborg unit will remain in present location."
"What computer dysfunction?" Slant was much more seriously worried by the computer's words than by anything Haiger had said.
"Computer is marginally dysfunctional as a result of general wear and damage suffered during recent power loss."
"Slant?"
"Just a moment; I'm thinking."
"We have to hurry."
"Listen, computer, I have got to leave!"
"Negative. Recommend enemy personnel be terminated."
"Why?"
"Cyborg unit will remain in present location."
"You're not making any sense; are you sure you're not seriously damaged?"
"Slant, we have to go." Haiger reached out to take the cyborg's arm.
Slant reacted automatically; he picked Haiger up and threw him across the room. The apprentice landed hard, the wind knocked out of him, but the furs and cushions kept him from serious injury; he lay dazed where he had fallen.
"Recommend enemy personnel be terminated."
"No, damn it, I won't kill him. I won't kill anybody." Six words spoken aloud aboard his ship would put an end to this idiotic behavior—but the computer wouldn't let him reach the ship to speak them yet. He refused to kill anyone else when he was this close to freeing himself from the computer's control.
"Please take proper action."
That phrase meant the computer would use the override if he continued to disobey; Slant didn't care. He headed for the door to the stairs leading down.
The override came on, and his legs stopped obeying him. He fell forward and lay face down on the rug, twitching as he fought the computer for control of his body.
"I won't kill him!"
The distance was extreme, and the computer had no power reserves; for the first time in his life Slant was able to resist the override, though with only limited success. His right hand jerked, swinging in an arc from his elbow, as the computer tried to force him to draw a weapon; while it concentrated its attention on his arm, he was able to roll onto his back, so that his vest was flung open to one side, the weapons out of reach again.
The arm jerked back, and the machine-pistol was knocked free. It fell to the floor beside him. He fought for control of his arm, and his hand flapped wildly back and forth.
Behind him a door opened, and the six wizards he had met with the previous morning entered the room.
"Enemy action occurring. Failure to cooperate in termination of enemy personnel will permit termination of cyborg unit."
"Damn it, I won't kill them!" He waited for the explosion as he continued to struggle. He was lying on his side, his right arm reaching out toward the gun; the computer was winning. Perhaps, he thought, that was why it was taking so long in carrying out its threat.
His hand touched the gun; he was concentrating now on keeping his fingers from closing on it. He remembered that the computer was weak on fine control at long range. He could no longer make any motion of his own; the computer had stopped that somehow, strengthening its hold. All he could do was slow down and throw off the moves the computer tried to make.
In a flash of intuition, he wondered if the computer's termination threat was a bluff; if so, he had called it, and so far nothing had happened.
His fingers closed loosely on the pistol grip, and the electric tingle of magic touched him. His index finger groped toward the trigger, and abruptly the crawling sensation became a vicious shock; his limbs jerked spastically, his hand slamming itself against the fur-covered floor but retaining its hold on the gun.
He was no longer able to control his movements at all as he flopped about, but apparently the computer was also incapacitated by the magic; he was flung onto his belly, and the back of his neck burned with an electrical fire that was beyond anything he had ever experienced before. He was no longer completely conscious, and wondered vaguely whether the incredible pain was due to thermite igniting or some new sort of wizardry.
"Cyborg unit has been captured. Immediate termination essential." There was a sudden dull hissing thump, horribly loud, behind him; his body was pressed down viciously, his face rammed into the fur, as if the building had indeed collapsed upon him. The back of his head was abruptly laced with' lines of burning agony, and he smelled singed hair and scorching flesh. He lost consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
HE WOKE UP IN A BLAZE OF PAIN, UNABLE TO MOVE HIS head or neck. It took several seconds to focus when he opened his eyes.
He was lying on his back on something cool and soft, looking up at a coffered ceiling painted white and gray. There was no sound he could identify, though the world around him was not completely silent; he heard a faint something that might have been wind or rain, and a rippling sound that could have been distant voices or running water.
It might have been pleasant had he not hurt so much.
Sunlight fell from somewhere, but he could not turn his head enough to see anything but ceiling and could not tell where it came from.
The pain was mostly in his neck and the back of his head, with other spots down his back and a dull grinding headache in his temples. Most of the damage felt like burns, but by no means all; he thought he could detect cuts, abrasions, bruises, and other injuries as well. Cautiously, he lifted his arm; that appeared normal and moved as he wanted it to. He reached up and felt the side of his head.
His hair was gone, and part of his beard; his hand touched dried blood and raw flesh, and he gasped, his vision blurring again, as the faint pressure increased the agony beyond what he had thought possible.
He was alive, but he had no idea where; he was obviously injured, though he was not sure what had happened to him. Somebody was apparently caring for him, since he appeared to be in a bed; the coffered ceiling suggested Praunce. He wondered what had happened to the computer, why it wasn't screaming at him.
"Are you there?" he asked tentatively.
"Affirmative. Please state identity."
He winced; the mental voice seemed unbearably loud. Its question was odd; the computer had never asked him that before. He wondered how badly damaged it was. "I'm Slant, of course."
"Cyborg unit designated Slant has been terminated."
"Oh." That explained the question, and a great deal more as well. He wondered how he had survived; had the wizards had something to do with it? He thought they must have, as he could vaguely recall his struggle with the override and that magic had been in use.
If he had been terminated, then the thermite was gone and he was free. The only serious question now was whether he could take control of the computer and use the starship for himself.
"I am Slant," he told the computer. "Is there anything in your programming that says I can't communicate with you after being terminated?"
"Negative."
"Then we can just go on as before, right?"
"Negative."
"Why not?"
"Termination of cyborg unit initiates self-destruct procedure."
"It does?" He didn't really
have to ask; he knew it did. That was why the computer had wanted him dead. "Then why are you still operational?"
"Programming requires that self-destruct operation be preceded by infliction of maximum possible damage to enemy installations."
He had known that, too. "Then why haven't you done your damage and shut yourself down, or blown yourself up?"
"Maximum possible damage requires use of main drive. Main drive is not presently in operation."
Slant did not have to ask any further questions. He did not want to ask any further questions.
If the ship were to blow itself up where it lay, in the gully, it would be a big, messy explosion, assuming all the various warheads went off, but would probably not hurt anyone except a few fanners who happened to be in the area. He would be stranded on the planet permanently, but relatively little harm would be done. Even the fallout wouldn't be significant when compared to the radiation level already present.
However, if the ship were to get airborne again and distribute its firepower effectively against the various cities, it could reduce the planet to a state fully as bad as it had been in three hundred years earlier. It could probably wipe out the entire civilization.
Slant had to stop that.
He felt a moment of panic as he wondered whether he could stop it, but that passed. Of course he could stop it. All he had to do was get back aboard the ship before it took off and use the release code. Even if it refused to recognize him he could get aboard; he knew all the emergency boarding procedures. Once aboard, anybody could use the release code. All he had to do was speak his name three times.
First, though, he had to get to his ship before it took off.
"How long before you can restart the drive?"
"Continued operation of photoelectric units should permit reignition within one hundred and twenty hours."
Before Slant had not worried too much about details, but he knew they could be crucially important now. "Is that a maximum time?"
"Affirmative."
"Allowing for bad weather and so forth?"
"Affirmative."
"Then what's the minimum?"
"Twenty-one hours."
Time was suddenly rushing by; every second increased the urgency. He realized for the first time that if he was still in Praunce when the ship began its attack he would be killed along with the hundreds of thousands of innocent natives. He had traveled for seven days to reach Praunce from the ship, and though he had been moving at a leisurely pace, he doubted he could get back to the vessel in less than three days. If the weather was bright, he had only a single day.
If the weather was cloudy, though, he might have as much as six days. An average of the two figures was three and a half days, or seventy hours. He could probably manage that if he got moving immediately. He had at least a decent chance of success, then.
There was no time to waste, however. He had to get out of bed and start moving. He would need help in getting under way; he guessed that he was probably still atop a tower, and would need a wizard to lower him to the ground. He tried to sit up, ignoring the surge of pain in his head, and shouted as he did so, calling as loudly as he could "Help! Help me!"
The near-silence vanished in a rush of footsteps and voices; a door slammed open somewhere nearby.
He managed to push himself into a sitting position on the edge of what was, as he had thought, a bed, and with some effort he brought his eyes back into focus, ignoring the drifting colored shadows that he knew were tricks of the mind and eye. He was in a room with soft gray walls and a deep golden carpet; the far end, a dozen meters away, was a single expanse of glass and lead, the panes clear or yellow or green, and smooth or rippled or bubbled. Nothing but open sky was visible beyond.
He was still in Praunce, and still atop one of the towers. He had time to see that much before his bed was surrounded by people. Arzadel was the first, followed by Haiger and Ahnao and others; they gathered at his bedside.
"You shouldn't be sitting up," Arzadel told him.
"I have to. I have to get to my ship as soon as possible."
"Why? What can be so urgent? You're badly injured; we got the explosive out of your head before it went off, but you were still much too close to the blast. You're severely burned from the top of your head halfway down your back, and I'm not sure we got all the fragments out.
We had to work on you for hours; it was a very delicate procedure, with all that metal and strange wiring in your head. We had to make a few changes so we could manage it, do something so you could live and heal—we don't ordinarily make changes without the subject's cooperation, but we had to."
"I know I was injured, I can feel it. The computer thinks I'm dead, though, and it has orders to take revenge for my death by destroying everything it can reach."
"The demon machine is still operating, though it believes you dead? We feared it might be."
"Oh, yes; it isn't stopped as easily as that. It plans to destroy as many of your cities as it can before it kills itself."
"How can it destroy cities? It's only a single machine, isn't it?"
"It controls a starship, armed with the same kind of weapons that made that crater to the south." He saw no point in subverting his own argument by mentioning that his ship's warheads were only a tiny fraction of the size.
Arzadel sucked in his breath, then asked, "What can be done to stop it? Can you fight it?"
"If I can get aboard the ship before it has enough power to take off, I can change its orders. I think I can make it obey me."
"How long do we have before it has enough power?"
"That depends on the weather, because it's taking energy from your sun's light, but it's between one day and six. If I leave immediately and ride hard, I might get there in time."
"You can't ride in your condition. It isn't possible. We'll fly you there."
That eased his worry somewhat. He had not thought of it "Good," he said. "But I still have to hurry."
"Where is your ship?"
"In a gully a few kilometers south of Awlmei."
"Where is Awlmei?"
Slant was startled that the wizard didn't know, but answered, "It's on the plain to the west of here; I traveled for seven days, two by foot and five by horse, to get here from there."
"Due west?"
"No, slightly to the north."
"We'll find it."
Slant was not as confident as Arzadel, but he nodded. The motion hurt his neck. He was beginning to feel very unsteady, and lay back on the bed. "We have to leave as soon as possible," he said.
"We will. You rest here; I'll make the preparations and wake you when we're ready."
Slant nodded again, carefully; Arzadel turned and left
When he had gone, taking most of the others with him, Slant said to Haiger, "Im sorry I threw you around like that."
"That's all right."
"That was a good idea, claiming the tower was going to collapse. I don't know why it didn't work."
"It was Shopaur's idea, not mine."
"Thank him for me, for trying."
"I will. I was wondering … how do you know that your machine wants to do these terrible things?"
"It talks to me. It told me what it was planning."
"It talks to you even when it thinks you're dead?"
"I guess it thinks I'm a ghost."
"A what?"
"Never mind." Either Slant had used the wrong word, of these people did not have ghost stories; in any case, it wasn't worth explaining. "It was told to answer my questions; nobody ever told it I had to be alive at the time."
Haiger said something else, but Slant did not hear it; he had fallen asleep.
When he awoke again the room was full of wizards. Arzadel was nearest him, and spoke.
"We're ready to go. We plan to take turns carrying you; that will be best. Have you any suggestions? We know nothing of this demon you must battle."
An idea had come to him while he slept "Wizards can control
the weather, can't they?"
"Sometimes."
"Could you contact the wizards in Awlmei, and ask them to to make it cloudy? That would give us more time."
In his raddled state it didn't occur to him that the wizards of Awlmei would probably take much more direct steps if they became aware of the computer's reawakening.
"The mind-talk doesn't work that well, I'm afraid; we're limited to a few kilometers at most, and Awlmei is much too far away."
"Then I have no other ideas. Let's get started."
"Right." Two wizards reached down and picked him up, trying to be gentle, but his head fell back against the pillow as one's hold slipped slightly, and he was suddenly blinded by pain.
When he could see again he was unsure how much time had passed, and whether he had remained conscious or not; the wizards were gathered around him still, but he was no longer in bed or in the gray room but on a rooftop. A strong wind blew out of the north—at least, he thought it was the north, assuming that the sun was in the southwest. He was unsure why he thought it to be afternoon rather than morning; it was the feel of the air as much as anything else.
A moment later he was in midair, supported by the two wizards; the others followed, trailing slightly behind. These were not the wizards who had accompanied Arzadel to bring him the decision of the Council, but others he had not met before, for the most part. He saw Arzadel among them, and one other was familiar. There was nothing he could do to help; his life and the lives of the computer's potential victims were in the hands of the wizards. He glanced at the ground far below; the city wall was passing beneath them, and the fields lay spread out ahead, the forests beyond them.
There was nothing he could do; he gave in to the pain and fell asleep again.
When he next awoke the sky was dark. He was gratified to see clouds dimly visible overhead, though there were not very many of them; the drive might take longer to restart than he feared, if those clouds lingered. He looked about and noticed that the wizards were flying at a much lower altitude. They were probably tiring, he told himself. He wished he were able to help.
Although it was hard to be certain by starlight—and his vision seemed to have blurred again, as well; he hoped that he had not suffered any permanent damage to the optic centers—he thought that the two who were carrying him were not the two who had picked him up from his bed. He looked around and could see only six wizards, where there had been eight originally. The missing two, he was fairly sure, were the pair who had first carried him; they must have tired, passed him on, and returned or landed to rest.
The Cyborg and the Sorcerers Page 24