by Keith Laumer
Joel was between us, huge fists ready; he landed a smashing left that would have felled an ox, followed with a right that struck the cold, smooth face like a cannonball. The creature seemed not to notice. It struck out, and Joel staggered, caught himself-and a second blow sent him skidding. Then the thing was past him, charging for me. Joel's diversion had given me the time to set myself. I caught the descending arm in a two-handed grip, hauled it around, broke it across my chest. I hurled the alien from me. Then, as it tripped and fell, I aimed a kick that caught it on the kneecap. It went down, and I stood over it breathing hard, as it threshed helplessly, silently, trying to rise on its broken leg.
"Don't struggle," I got out between breaths. "That wouldn't be logical, would it? Now it's time for you to tell me a few things. Where did you come from? What world?"
It lay still then, a broken toy, no longer needed. "You will die soon," it said flatly.
"Maybe; meanwhile just call me curious. Where's your headquarters? Who runs things, you or the dogs? What do you do with the men you steal-or their brains?"
"Information is of no use to the soon-dead," the flat voice stated indifferently.
Behind me, Joel moaned-a thin, high wail of animal torment. I whirled to him. He lay oddly crumpled at the base of a giant tree, his face white, shocked. Blood ran from his mouth. I went to him, knelt, and tried to ease him to a more comfortable position.
Another cry came from his open mouth-a mindless cry of pure agony. I laid him out on his back, opened his jacket.
The front of his shirt was a sodden mass of bloody fabric. The thing's blow had smashed his chest as effectively as a falling safe.
"Joel, hold on-I'll get you to a doctor." I eased my arms under him, started to lift.
He shrieked, twisted once-then went limp.
My hand went to his wrist, found a pulse, weak, unsteady-but he was alive. His eyelids fluttered, opened.
"I fell down," he said clearly.
"I'll get you into the heli." My voice was choked.
"It hurt my head," Joel went on. "But now it don't hurt…" His mouth twitched. His tongue touched his lips. The shadow of a frown came over his face.
"It tickles in my head," he said. "I don't like it when it tickles in my head. I don't want the dogs to come, Jones. I'm afraid."
"The dogs?" I felt my scalp tighten. I twisted, staring into the forest, saw nothing. "Come on, Joel; I'm going to lift you into the heli." I put a hand under his back, half-lifted him. He screamed hoarsely. I lowered him again.
"It hurts too bad, Jones," he gasped out. "I'm sorry."
"Where are the dogs, Joel?"
"They're close." His eyes sought me. His tongue licked his lips again. "I know-you got to go now, Jones. I'm sorry I yelled and all."
I whirled on the broken man-thing. "How far away are they?" I snapped. "You called them; how long before they'll be here?"
It looked at me with the one eye that remained in its battered head, and said nothing. I kicked it in the side, sent the limp body skidding two yards.
"Talk, damn you!"
It merely looked at me, as impersonally as a morgue attendant taking inventory. Its gaze went past me; it seemed to be listening…
Then I felt it-the greasy, gray feeling of unreality that meant the demons were closing in. I keened my hearing…
I heard the lope of demonic hands galloping across frozen ground, brushing against brittle, leafless twigs, coming closer.
"You… gotta… hurry… up…" Joel's voice croaked. "G'bye, Jones. You was… a good friend. I guess… you was… the only friend… I ever had…"
He was dying; I knew nothing I could do would save him. And a few feet away the heli waited, fueled and ready. I wanted to go.
But I couldn't do it.
"Take it easy, Joel," I said hoarsely. "I'm not leaving. I'm staying with you."
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
There was a crash of underbrush. As I whirled, a dark dog-shape bounded from the shadow of a giant tree, turned, and charged into the circle of light. I set myself. As it leaped, I threw my weight into a straight-arm blow that met the bony face in midair, drove it back in pulped ruin into the shattered skull. The thing hurtled past me, struck, threshing in its death-fit.
Two more of the beast-things leaped into view, sprang at me side by side. I caught one by the neck, crushed bone and hide together, hurled it aside. I turned to drive a kick into the chest of the second as it rounded on me. I jumped after it, smashed its head with a left and right as it rose up, snapping.
There were more of them around me now. I spun, kicked at one, struck another down with my chromalloy fist, shook a third from my right arm, fended off another… It was a nightmare battle against leaping creatures almost impalpable to my PAPA-reinforced blows; they came at me like bounding ghost-shapes, red-eyed and gape-jawed. I struck, and struck, and struck again.
A white-hot bear-trap closed on my leg. I tried to shake it off. It clung, dragging at me. Jaws snapped an inch from my throat. I hammered at a skull-face, saw it crumble-and another sprang up. One struck me from behind. I stumbled, felt jaws like a saw-edged vise clamp on my thigh. There was one at my left arm now; I heard its teeth break against the steel rods. With my free hand, I struck at it; then two of the things leaped at once, fastened on my good arm I twisted away from jaws that lunged for my throat, felt myself falling. Then I was down, and the weight on me was like heaped mattresses set with needles of fire; I was like a man drowning in a sea of piranha-razor teeth stripping the flesh from the living bone…
I was on my back, a cluster of demon faces over me like surgeons over an operating table; teeth snapped, ripped at my throat; I felt the tearing of flesh, the gush of scalding blood. As if in a dream, I heard the gabble of demon voices, the slap of beast hands. Then blackness closed over me. I knew it was death.
Chapter Twelve
Somewhere, I dream in a sunless emptiness where the years arch like ancient elms over the long avenue of time-a path across eternity, without a beginning and without end.
Into the static universe, change comes: a sense of subtle pressures, of energy-fields in transition. An imbalance grows-and with the imbalance a need-and from the need, volition. I sense movement, the slide and turn of intricate components, and the tentative questing of sensors, like raw nerves hesitantly exposed. Light, form, color impinge on delicate instruments. Space takes on dimension, texture.
All around me, a broad plain of shattered rock and black shadows stretches away to a line of fire at the edge of the world, under the glare of a sun that rages purple-white against bottomless silver-black.
A shape moves, small with distance-beyond it, others. I am moving too, driving forward effortlessly over the rough ground, throwing up dust in heavy clouds that drop back with a curious quickness. Rock-chips fly, twinkling as they fall. I sense vibrations; the thunder of my passage, the whine and growl of meshing metal, the oscillation of electrons.
Abruptly, from beyond the jagged horizon, an object comes, a glittering torpedo-shape tipped with blue fire, flashing with a swiftness that swells it in a movement to giant size. I feel the closing of relays within me; circuits come alive. My back arches; I lift my arms and thrust Fire lances from my fingertips, a silent stuttering of brilliance across the sky. I pivot, trailing the shattered projectile as it gouts incandescence, breaks apart, falls in fragments beyond a distant stony ridge. A growl of thunder rolls, dies. I rake my eyes across the desolate spread of fragmented shale around me, mark a flicker of movement among up-tilted rock-slabs, point and fire in one smooth, coordinated motion…
And still I plunge on, charging to a blind attack against an unknown enemy.
***
I grind down a long slope, dozing aside rock-chunks, jolting across crevasses. A vast shape swings from an inky shadow to my left, pivots heavily, trailing a shattered tread-dreadnaught of the enemy, damaged, left behind in the retreat, but with its offensive power intact. I see the immense di
srupter grid swing to bear on me, glow to red heat I lock full emergency power to my prime batteries, open my mouth, and bellow-and bellow again…
Then I am racing off-side, driving for the crest of a ridge, over, down the far slope as molten rock bubbles behind me. The shock wave strikes and I am lifted, flung down-slope. I catch myself, claw for purchase; the limping monster appears on the ridge and I hurl my thunder at it and see its exposed grid shatter, explode…
I turn back to rejoin my column, aware of the drive of mighty gears and shafts, of curving plates of flintsteel and chromalloy, of the maze of neurotronic linkages that run to command-ganglia, and from these secondary centers to the thousand sensors, controls, mechanisms, reflex circuits that are my nervous system. Far away, I feel a momentary stir of remote phantom memories-faint echoes of a forgotten dream of life… but the recollection fades, is forgotten.
I swing up across a slanting rock-shelf, take up my position on the flank of a fire-spouting behemoth bearing the symbol of a Centurion. The battle continues…
***
I fight, responding automatically to each emergency with the instant reaction of drilled reflexes-but in among the incisive commands of my response circuits, meaningless wisps of thought flash like darting fishes:
Wheel left into line, advance in file… dry-looking country; a long way between bars… Main battery, arm; primary quadrant, saturation fire… What is this place? A hell of a strange sky… Defensive armor, category nine; blank visual sensors for flash at minute twelve microseconds, mark… Air-bursts all around, looks like a battle going on; what am I doing here? Advance at assault speed; arm secondary batteries, omega shields in position… The dust-it's thick as Georgia clay-but I seem to see through it, beyond it "UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR! DAMAGE REPORT!"
The words flash into my mind like the silent blow of a bright ax, not spoken in English, but spat in an abbreviated Command code of harsh inflected syllables. I hear myself acknowledge the order in kind, as in instant compulsive response my damage sensors race through a fifty-thousand-item checklist like rats scurrying among filled shelves. "Negative," I hear myself report. "All systems functional."
But deep inside me a dam strains, cracks, bursts. A tendril of released thought, startled awake by the command, seems to grope, struggling outward. Word-images, sharp-chiseled as diamonds, thrust among the bodiless conceptualizations of rote conditioning. I reach back, back-to the blinding light of a strange awakening, past confusion and dawning awareness… back… into a bland, ever-dwindling record of stimulus, pain, stimulus, pleasure; a wordless voice that speaks, instructs, impresses, punishes, rewards-printing on my receptive mind the skein of conditioned reflex, the teachings that convert the blanked protoplasm of the shocked brain into the trained battle-computer of a dreadnaught of the line…
And in the forefront of my mind, I am remembering: somewhere long ago, a body-of flesh and blood, soft, complex, infinitely responsive A target flashes, and I aim and fire That impulse had once lifted an arm, pointed a finger. A human finger; a human body! I savor the concept, at once strange and as familiar as life itself. The fragile concept of identity crystallized from vagueness, grows, sharpens There is a moment of disorientation, a swirling together and a rending apart.
I am a man. A man named Bravais.
***
"UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR! RECHECK NAVIGATIONAL GRID FOR GROSS POSITIONAL ERROR!" The habit of obedience carried me forward over rough ground, maneuvering in response to long-learned rules as rigid as laws of nature. My sensors lanced out, locked to my fellow machines; my control mechanisms acted, swinging me to the point of zero-stress, then driving me forward-and in my mind, thoughts jostled each other:
Secondary target, track!… If you meet another Julius, break him in two and keep going… advance, assault speed… This is your Station Monitor; permission requested to mutilate the body… Arm all batteries; ten-microsecond alert… I guess you was the only friend I ever had-
Suddenly, vividly, I remembered the fight with the demons, the weight of the stinking bodies that bore me down, teeth tearing at my throat…
I had seen the enemy at work-the deft saws, the clever scalpels.
I remembered the brain of the Algerian major, lifted from the skull, preserved As mine was now preserved.
The demons had killed my body, left it to rot in the forest. But now I lived again-in the body of a great machine.
"UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR: REPORT!"
The command struck at me-a mental impulse of immense power. I watched, an observer aloof from the action, as my conditioned-response complex reacted, sensing the fantastic complexity of the workings of the mobile fort that was now my body.
"RETIRE TO POSITION IN SECONDARY TIER!" The harsh order galvanized my automatic responses in instant obedience On impulse, I intercepted the command; then I reached out along my circuits, sent out new commands. I turned myself, faced the violent sun, moved ponderously forward; I halted, pivoted, tracked my guns across the dark sky. Somehow, I had gained control of my machine-body. I remembered the command-the external voice that would have asserted its control But instead, it had cued my hypnotically-produced reserve personality-fraction into active control.
I withdrew, felt the automatics resume control, moving me off to my new station. The aliens were clever, and as thorough as death; I had been tracked down, killed, chained in slavery on a ruined no-man's world; but I had broken the bonds. I was alive, master of my fortress-body-free, inside the enemy defenses!
***
Later-hours or days, I had no way of knowing-I rumbled down an echoing tunnel into a vast cavern, took my place in a long line of scarred battle units.
"UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR: FALL OUT!" the command voice bellowed soundlessly. I moved forward. Other units moved up, stationed themselves on either side of me. A long silence grew. I was aware that other orders were being given-orders not addressed to me, automatically tuned out by my trained reflexes. Something was going on…
I made an effort, extended sensitivity, picked up the transmission:
"-malfunction! Escort Unit Eighty-four to interrogation chamber and stand by during reflex-check! Acknowledge and execute!"
I heard the snick of relays closing; I was hearing the internal command circuits of my fellow battle units.
"UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR: PROCEED TO INTERROGATION CHAMBER!"
I let my automaton-circuits stir me into motion. I moved off, listening as the command voice gave a final instruction to my armed guard:
"Units Eighty-three and Eighty-five: at first indication of deviant response, trigger destruct circuits!"
I saw the turrets of the battle wagons beside me swing to cover me; their ports slid back, the black snouts of infinite repeaters emerged, aimed and ready. The command-mind had already sensed something out of the ordinary in Unit Eighty-four.
I rolled on toward the interrogation chamber, monitoring the flow of reflex-thought in the minds of the units beside me-a dull sequence of course-correction, alert-reinforcements, routine functional adjustments. Carefully, using minimal power, I reached out…
"Unit Eighty-three; damage report!" I commanded.
Nothing happened. The battle units were programmed to accept commands from only one source-the Command voice.
"Units Eighty-three and Eighty-five: arm weapons; complete prefire drill!" The command came. From beside me, I heard arming locks slide open. Together, my guards and I entered the armored test cell.
***
"UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR! DISARM AND LOCK ALL WEAPONS! RESPONSE-SEQUENCE ALPHA, EXECUTE!" The voice of the Interrogator rang out.
I watched as my well-drilled reflexes went through their paces. I would have to move with great care now; every action was under scrutiny by the enemy. Another command came, and as I responded, I studied the quality of the Interrogator's voice. It was different, simpler, lacking the overtones of emotion of the Command-mind. I reached out my awareness toward it, sensed walls of armor, the complex filaments of circuitry. I followed a communicati
ons lead that trailed off underground, arose in a distant bunker. The intricacy of a vast computer lay exposed before me. I probed gently, testing the shape and density of the mechanical mind-field; it was a poor thing, a huge but feeble monomaniac-but it was linked to memory banks…
I felt a warning twitch of alarm in the moron-circuits, caught the shape of an intention-Instantly I shunted aside its command, struck back to seize control of the computer's limited discretionary function. Holding it firmly, I traced the location of the destruct-assembly that it would have activated, found it mounted below my brain, disarmed it. Then I instructed the Interrogator to continue with the routine checkout, and to report all normal. While it busied itself in idiot obedience, I linked myself to its memory banks, scanned the stored data.
The results were disappointing: the Interrogator's programming was starkly limited, a series of test patterns for fighting and service machines. I withdrew, knowing no more than I had of the aliens.
***
The Interrogator reported me as battle-ready. On command, I rejoined my waiting comrades. An order came: "ALL UNITS, SWITCH TO MINIMUM AWARENESS LEVEL!"
As the energy quotient in my servo-circuits dropped, the sensitivity range of my receptors drew in, scanning from the gamma scale down through ultra-violet, past infra-red, into the dullness of short-wave. Silence and darkness settled over the depot.
I sent out a pulse, scanned the space around me. The clatter of the Command-voice was gone. I was alone now-I and my comatose comrades-in-arms. There were ninety-one units, similar to myself in most respects, but armed with a variety of weapons. Small, busy machines scurried among us, carrying out needed repairs. I touched one, caught vague images of a simplified world-image, out-lined in scents and animal drives. I recognized it as the brain of an Earthly dog, programmed to operate the elementary maintenance apparatus.