by neetha Napew
I turned, started for the bathroom, and remembered the guard-bot alarm that would bring a mechanical policeman from the storage vault at the far end of this floor. I ran to the bed, depressed the button in the wall, then hurried into the bathroom as He struck the bedroom door behind me. I slammed this final barrier, locked it, and looked around for something to push against it. There was nothing. Everything in the bath was bolted down. I sat on the commode to the left of the door, out of line of any bullets, and waited for the guard-bot, hoping it would make it in time.
I could hear Him in the bedroom. The door to the living room had given in with a crash, and He was through, only one plastic door away from me. Then He was against the bathroom door, and His voice came to me through the plastic, faint, husky, a dry whisper. “Jacob . . . Jacob, are you in there?”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You,” He said.
“But why?”
“Jacob. . . .”
“Help!” I shouted as loud as I could. It was useless, of course. The apartments in that building were almost perfectly soundproof. And the most isolated room of all was the bath. Still, I shouted, because I felt a need to vocalize my terror. There was something in His voice, in the harsh, ugly tones of His whisper that I had never heard before. It was, I fancied, madness. He spoke like a psychotic, His words couched in a madman’s cadences.
I do not know how long I shouted. When I stopped, my voice hoarse, I was aware of a rapping on the door. For a moment, I almost laughed at the absurdity of His knocking now, after blasting His way this far. Then I heard the voice, which must have been calling me for some time. “Dr. Kennelmen,” it said. It was not a whisper, but a healthy male baritone. “This is your guard-bot. You called me. I have come in response. Dr. Kennelmen. This is your guard-bot. You called me. I have come—“
I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stepped into the bedroom. The guard-bot, a slightly more complex form of the Clancy, hovered a few feet away, its pin-gun barrels uncapped and pointing out of the roundness of its underside. “You called me,” it said. “I have come. Is anything wrong?”
“Come with me,” I said, leading the way through the apartment. I searched all the rooms and closets until I was satisfied that He had gone. I had expected Him to stay, for I was certain it would be nothing for Him to handle the guard-bot. But the place was empty.
“Is there anything you want?” the guard-bot asked, the words coming out of its speaker grid with a faint whistling sound.
“Stay right here,” I said. “I’m packing to leave. If you see or hear anyone approaching, summon me at once.” And I left him in the living room while I stuffed clothes and toiletries into an overnight case. He walked me to the elevator and rode to the roof with me, waited while I got a helicar. When I lifted off into the night sky over New York City, he turned and floated back into the lift, sent it down with an electric signal.
The computer under the dash of the helicar asked me my roof destination. When I could not think of anything to say, the central traffic control computer housed in the old Empire State Building, cut in, demanded immediate notification of destination, and warned that I would be set down and my helicar privileges canceled if I tried to sabotage the traffic control pattern. I asked for a random flight out of the City, over the Atlantic. The central computer cut out, and my car’s own brain began devouring information sent it by central and plotting a random course to slip between the lines of regular traffic.
When you have a few hundred thousand vehicles in the air over one city—from passenger liners to military craft to helicars to drop capsules being spit out of intercontinental rocket bellies—you need a highly complex regulator like the central traffic control computer in eighty-one floors of the Empire State. The other floors of the building house the offices and work areas of the technicians and staff who care for that same computer. One accident in the air can be like a domino collapse. If two craft on a top level of traffic collide, they may take down a dozen or two other pieces of air traffic before they smash into the roofs below.
For a full twenty minutes, we wove in and out of the pattern, swinging to all points of the compass, rising and going back down to make way for commercial and private craft already assigned to that position. Other craft slid by us on all sides, sometimes as close as five or ten feet, the drivers inside perfectly visible in the glow of their cabin lights. Then we were into clearer air, over the Atlantic, beyond the most used airlanes, even out past the holding patterns for transoceanic flights. I could lean against the window and look down on the sea below, where medium-sized waves curled off toward the continent, capped with white foam, otherwise black as oil. Above, there was a heavy cloud layer from which a light snow filtered. The wipers clicked on and thumped back and forth across the windscreen.
I asked the dash computer if it would be possible to go above the clouds since they were so low, and it obliged, because it could work out the maneuver without disturbing the traffic pattern. Suddenly, the clouds were below me, and the almost-full moon lay cold and serene in the black sky overhead.
“What do you do when God is out to get you?” I asked aloud.
“Pardon?” the computer said.
“Ignore me,” I said.
“That is impossible, sir. My pickups function constantly and are beyond my control.”
“That must get boring,” I said, “listening to all your passengers’ problems.”
“On the contrary,” the helicar said, “that is my only contact with the outside world.”
I knew then that the central traffic computer had tapped this cab again to see if things were functioning properly. The simple brain and simple voice-tapes of the helicar would not have been up to this sort of banter.
“I’ll try not to talk aloud,” I said.
“Very well.”
And there was silence again.
But what could you do when the omniscient was watching? When the omnipotent was about to make His move. But was He omniscient? No, that was doubtful. He had not shown any signs of knowing all that was going on and would go on. He was not omnipotent either, or He would not have been frightened off by the guard-bot. What had He said there in Harry’s cabin? He had denied that He was the immovable object, but had stated that He was the irresistible force. And that summed Him up quite well. Parts of Him could be killed. He could be temporarily defeated. But, in the end, He would win because He could tap the flow of life and return to fight again and again in other copies of Himself. So the answer to the question, “What can you do when God is out to get you,” was—“Nothing.”
No. Wait. There was one thing.
“Kill Him,” I said.
“Who?” the computer asked.
“Sorry. Thinking aloud.”
“I don’t mind. Passengers are my only—“
“Link to the outside,” I finished for it. Then we were both quiet again.
Kill Him. Yes, it was possible. Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. I would have to go back to Cantwell, back to the mother body in the cellar of Harry’s cabin. I would have to go well enough armed to take Him out quickly and completely, so He had no chance to heal Himself. I would have to get near enough without arousing His suspicions, or without letting Him kill me. How? Well, I could think about that. I could work on it and come up with something.
Why? Why would I want to kill Him when I had gone to all that trouble to help Him? Why kill Him after I knew that He was God, and, therefore, the greatest force for good in the universe. Or was He? Who could state with assurance that this God was a benevolent one? Suddenly, I could see one instance in which He might wish to see me dead. Suppose He was not benevolent. Suppose He was not even God, as He claimed. Suppose, instead, He was what He logically appeared to be: a superior species, the first of its kind, able to reproduce in hours and at will. And suppose He would be more pleased in a world composed of his own kind. Suppose all those things, and you could not help but be a little frightened. If H
e were about to initiate a war against mankind, it would be quite sensible to destroy me before continuing, for I was the only one who knew His sanctuary, the only one who even partially understood what had happened to Him in the last several days.
We dipped through the clouds as a huge airliner roared into our traffic lane. The helicar bumped about in the turbulence of the other craft’s jets, then came up out of the clouds once more and leveled off, running out to sea.
So what could I do? Contact World Authority? Bring in the nukes and blast Cantwell and Harry’s cabin to hell-and-gone? At first, that seemed like the most intelligent thing to do. Then the longer I thought about it, the more stupid it appeared. How many android selves would He have circulating by this time? Enough, surely, to keep track of things to the extent that He would notice any sudden troop maneuvers, and be able to extrapolate their meaning. I reminded myself that each of His android selves had a rubber face that could be restructured in seconds. He could impersonate anyone. If He were out for world domination, He could have already moved His plastic-faded androids into WA positions of authority. He very likely had. And He would know of any proposed bombing strike. And even if the mother body were destroyed, any one of the android selves could metamorphose into another mother body. The only chance of working against Him, then, was to work in total secrecy. And that ruled out the WA.
I would have to go after the mother body itself. Maybe I could get into the cellar and talk with Him. He might let me in before killing me, just to please whatever sadistic streaks there were in Him. I could, at least, find out how many android selves there were, how many other facets of Him we would have to hunt down.
Problem: He can read my mind. So He knows when I come in the cellar that I have a means of destroying Him. And He will not let me do it. And even if I manage to kill Him, I will very likely kill myself without being able to transmit information about the other android selves. In effect, I would not hurt Him at all.
“I must make a turn,” the dash computer said. “If we continue out to sea, we will enter another traffic pattern not controlled by the New York central.”
“Okay,” I said.
We turned, gracefully, easily, moving back.
“Could we go under the clouds now?” I asked.
“Certainly.”
We went down. Below the cover, the snow had picked up as I thought it might have. The wipers came back on, though I would have preferred to let the snow cover the glass, and there was no driver to require a clear view.
I had reached a dead end. There was no way to stop Him. All that was left was to wait for Him to kill me, or give up trying and launch His attack on civilization with, perhaps, a hundred mother bodies producing warriors.
I had never been so depressed in my life. Not only was the situation hopeless, but I had helped to make it so. And, to make my position worse, I could not share the problem with anyone else without making them as paranoid and depressed as I. There was no help anywhere.
“Take me to the Manhattan Colossus,” I said to the computer. The Colossus was the best hotel in the city, but I felt as if I wanted to splurge tonight.
“Destination acknowledged,” the computer said.
The snow beat at us, swept by the car, whirled and eddied around the corners of the windscreen.
We settled on the roof of the Colossus, and I fumbled my credit card out of my wallet, slipped it in the payment slot. When the central computer checked with the main banking computer for the city and discovered my card was good, it popped it back out to me and opened the doors so I could get out. I stepped onto the tarmac, carrying my overnight case, and had to fend off three human bellboys who wanted to heft it for me. I don’t mind giving tips, but I despise being treated like a cripple, or a weakling who can’t manage a single case without assistance. I went to the elevator, dropped down to the first reception desk on the 109th floor, and checked in under my own name.
In my room, I stripped, showered, and fell into bed. I did not know whether I could sleep or not. How does a man sleep when he knows the world may crash down around him at any moment? Somehow, I drifted to the very edge of awareness, ready to slip away into darkness, when the room phone rang. I reached out and picked it up.
“Yes?” I said sleepily.
“Jacob . . .”
It was His voice. I hung up.
A moment later, the phone rang again. I could not help myself. I answered it.
“Jacob, I know where you are,” He said. “I know just exactly where you are.”
XII
His face glared up at me from the screen of the phone. He was grinning. It was not the warm, winning grin that I had seen so many times before, but a twisted, unnatural thing that made me feel cold and afraid. He winked at me, then reached out to a panel below His screen and dropped His receiver into the cradle. The picture blinked off. The call was completed. Numb, I hung up too.
I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and the patterns of holes in the acoustical tile. It was possible, if you thought hard enough, to see all sorts of things in those patterns. I could make out the face of an ape in one square. Another, tilted at a slightly different angle, revealed a pair of eyes, staring wide, with a subtle look of uncertainty. Suddenly, I shoved to the edge of the bed and got up. He knew where I was, dammit. He would be coming for me. There was nothing to do but get out of there. Sure, I could not run from Him forever. He would find me sooner or later. But no man likes to die. And, I thought, if I could just gain some time, I might think of something, something to do to get to Him. Maybe it was a false hope, a dream, but it was one I would have to hold on to if I were to keep my sanity . . .
I dressed quickly, threw everything back into my suitcase, and stopped before the door into the corridor, trying to outline a course of action before I plunged on. He had evidently followed my helicar and had known I checked into the Colossus. How He found my room number was a mystery, but it could be worked out by someone determined enough. To lose Him, I would have to change vehicles again and again, move like the pea in that old walnut-shell con-game, move and move until He had no idea where I was.
And then what? I thought. Sit in some sleazy hotel, waiting for the world to end. Watching the streets through my windows, trying to see if the battles between men and androids had begun- yet? That did not particularly excite me. Running was necessary if I were to stay alive to think. But, in the end, what good would thinking do? I had already thought it out, and I had already decided He was unreachable. All right, then. I would lose the android self that now tailed me, then take a trip to Cantwell, go back up to Harry’s cabin. I might not be able to do a thing, but it was my only chance.
I stepped into the hallway, expecting a spatter of bullets, hurried to the elevator, dropped. Too fast. By the time we were down ninety floors, my internal parts were frantically trying to crawl back to their proper locations.
Next, I went to the Bubble Drop station on that floor, punched out a midtown destination, and stepped forward, sat down on the chair, and was moving into the departure foyer where a Bubble would be sprayed up around me by the automatic equipment. Another capsule was just leaving the foyer and entering the tube-ways. I slipped in behind it, and barreled after it. A quarter of a mile later, I became aware of the fact that the rider of the other Bubble had turned around in the seat and was looking back. He waved at me. It was the android . . .
He must have been waiting outside my room when I was planning what to do. Or perhaps He had been near me at some other point on my trip to the Bubble Drop station. Somewhere along the line, He had been close enough to read my mind, to pick out my plans. But why hadn’t He killed me when He was close? Why wait until now and do it this way? But if He was a sadist, if He was a deranged, antagonistic creature rather than God, He would act just like this. He would be enjoying my terror as we barreled down the tubeways, both of us going for the same departure point. He would know that I would realize He would be waiting for me when I c
ame out of the exit foyer. Waiting to kill me . . .
He wanted to terrorize me. He was succeeding.
I looked behind my Bubble in the wild hope that there was someone behind me who was coming to the same station; but there was only empty space back there. I turned around again, saw that He was still waving. I could not bring myself to wave back, for I could see that twisted grin, that leer that He had shown me over the phone in my hotel room. We had as much as three or four minutes before the high-speed Bubble would pull into the station I had punched for. This gave me no more than two minutes to think of something.
We whizzed through an intersection, and another Bubble whined past my back end on the cross-tube, missing me by inches. If only, I thought, it would have struck me. The computer would have shut down these tubeways and sent help of some sort. And from that impossible wish grew my idea. What if I were to wreck myself? The computer would stop everything just as thoroughly as if another vehicle had struck me.
Perhaps a minute left.
He was still grinning.
I lifted my suitcase, picked a spot on the side of the Bubble to my left, and smashed the hard edge of the case into the shell. There was a resounding thwack! that stung my ears, but the shell held. I drew the case back as far as I could, and let go with as much force as I could muster. The shell cracked, webbed with a hundred lines radiating out from the impact point. The Bubble kept moving. Frantically, I swung, again and again. The last blow made a hole in the shell and spread the cracks out until they covered most of the Bubble. I swung once more, was rewarded with a horrendous crashing sound, as the pieces of the shell fell away to both sides.
The Bubble had shielded me from the compressed-air cylinders under the chair, for the cylinders had been slung so that the plastic was blown above them. Now I could reach them. With the wind whistling over me, pulling my hair straight back behind me, I brought the edge of my battered suitcase down on the cylinders, knocking them awry. I struck again, knocked them off altogether. The seat, sans Bubble and propulsion system, wobbled, collided with a wall, and turned over, spilling me onto the floor of the shaft, my face slashed by the soft wires, the rest of my body protected by my clothes.