by D. F. Jones
Puzzled, but relieved that he was much calmer, she obeyed. She hardly knew what to say, but soon realized he was not hearing a word.
He shut his eyes, summoned his strength for a showdown with his mind.
Right - you’re a scientist, not an ignorant peasant. Start with those damned names. Look objectively at them: Mars, Phobos, Diemos - so what? Might have been Tom, Dick, and Harry - but they weren’t. Okay, disregard the last two, they had only followed on as a result of the first. Why had the planet been called Mars in the first place? So easily it might have been Juno, or Artemis, or -
He stopped himself there, unaware Angela was biting her lip to stop crying out at the strength of his grip.
No… . Face it: Mars, the blood red planet, had been thought a star of ill omen from ancient times, and had been rightly named. Could it be that deep in the timeless universal unconscious mind of man it had always been known that Mars was Earth’s enemy? Again he pulled himself up: this was dishonest time-wasting. He had to face his trauma, not ruminate on irrelevancies. Face it - now …. What had he seen? What had he thought he saw?
The sudden illusion of the room darkening, the Martian spheres transformed into heads set on short, misshapen bodies. More of them he could not distinguish, his attention riveted on the shadowy figure, gigantic, materializing behind and above them. A face half hidden beneath a glittering helmet, a brutal face, hot-eyed, full of infinite menace, the face of the War God, Mars …
Forbin’s mental eye skidded away from the awful countenance, thankful the image was dim. Even in retrospect, knowing Angela was with him, he prayed he might not see more of it, keeping his gaze fixed on the helmet, its dancing plume of blood-dyed horsehair, the embossed badge, the hideous head of Medusa, snakes for hair, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, the lolling, overlong tongue… . Medusa, the epitome of malevolence, whose merest glance turned men to stone - a fitting emblem for Mars.
He fought, sweating, to keep his inward eye on the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. He was a man of science, reason. Reason must win, and the fight had to be here and now. The thought brought small comfort; he dare not shift his gaze from the badge. Desperately he prayed the sight would fade, not to some dark corner of his mind, ready to spring out on him, but to go forever.
Somehow his tenuous self-control held; he found strength to study the badge. Sinister in implication, it should not of itself be frightening - not in waking thought: a crude if powerful portrayal, familiar enough -
Forbin froze as if the Medusa had claimed him, but the cause was not fear.
There was something wrong with the picture.
At once fear weakened; his trained observer’s eye, backed by near-total recall, was a keen scientific tool.
What was wrong? The writhing snakes? No. Not the teeth, bared in a ghastly open-mouthed grin, or the mad eyes. The tongue? Yes, that was it - the tongue, chipped on its lower rounded edge …
Chipped on an embossed badge? That didn’t make sense. No doubt about it - not dented, chipped. And that aside, what Olympian god - least of all Mars - would appear in any apparel less than perfect?
Then he had it. He sat back; his grip on Angela’s hand relaxed as the mental picture grew less distinct, vanishing in enormous waves of relief rolling in. Now he could look at it without fear, the vision no more frightening than the stage ghost in Hamlet.
What he had seen was nothing more than a reprojection of his own mind, enhanced with dreadful realism by the Martians - and they’d got it wrong. In composing the picture, they’d taken most of it from his memories of Homer’s immortal Iliad, but they had found this more recent memory of Medusa’s head - or perhaps his subconscious had already done it - and substituted it as the badge. Medusa’s head was more vivid, for he had seen it with Cleo on a rare, happy weekend they’d spent in Boston, Mass. In the Museum of Fine Arts his wife had commented on the incongruity of the tongue; he’d noticed the chip, idly wondering if the damage was accidental or intentional. That had been five, six years back, the Iliad he had not read for - what - twenty years?
They’d got it wrong! Like humans, Martians could make mistakes. He felt not so much better as marvelous. If not on top of the world, at least he was not underneath it. The realization that, unlike Blake, he had only endured a gentle arm-twisting was sobering, but at least he was in part armored against further attack. They didn’t know it all; he had only to be alert, conditioned to watch unflinchingly, certain they could show him nothing he did not have already in his mind ….
He blinked, abruptly aware of Angela, dutifully talking about a dress she had seen. “Do stop it, woman!” His smile belied his words. “The way you go on!” In a different tone: “Thank you, my dear. You can have no conception of what you have done for me.”
Open-mouthed in amazement, she could only stammer, “I didn’t do anything, Chief.”
He followed her train of thought. “So you don’t think I’m drunk?”
She didn’t know what to think. She got up, furtively massaging her hand.
“You know, I feel hungry.” He had no idea of the time. He stood up, still a little pale, but very much in command of himself. “Think I’ll have a bite, then go and see Blake.”
She rallied, trying to meet his inexplicable change. “There’s a few things you should see, Chief.”
“Yes, yes.” He frowned in concentration, staring at her. Not the most beautiful woman in the world, beneath her professional gloss lay a kind woman. Nice figure too, in a tough Amazonian way - still, thank God for that: a tower of strength in more ways than one. “Yes,” he said again. “You bring it all round to my apartment at six-thirty. And stay for dinner. Yes.”
Both were astonished at the invitation. Forbin gone, she sniffed suspiciously at the coffee cup.
Blake’s reaction to Forbin’s news was predictable and understandable. “Hell, you only had a whiff of their power!”
“Oh, agreed - but I did have a whiff. They’re super-beings to us, but we know now they’re certainly not gods. It doesn’t do us much good,” Forbin admitted, “but psychologically it must help.”
“Maybe-but you’d better get this right, Charles: I, for one, can’t face them again, not ever.”
“I appreciate that, Ted, but at least in one field we have some chance of meeting them.”
Blake did not look up, concentrating on the bed-cover pattern. In a low, hesitant voice he said, “There could be a chance, Charles.”
Forbin glanced at him sharply. “What d’you mean?”
“Remember when I cut the power on Colossus? That great big moment …”He sighed, slowly shaking his head. “What you don’t know is I also cut the lines to the parent installations, Stateside and Russian. Did it as an extra precaution against any Doomsday trigger signal to missile controls. Sure, there was a faint risk the whole shebang would blast off, but I guessed not, and got it right.” Forbin’s puzzlement was sufficient reward. “You don’t get it?”
“You tell me,” said Forbin noncommittally.
“When those bastards,” Blake hissed the word venomously, “investigated Colossus, they got no readout from the old array.”
“Oh, that,” said Forbin, disappointed. “The chances are there’s nothing to read. We can’t guess what Colossus used those old stations for; by his standards they were back in the Stone Age. Anyway, any worthwhile material was probably stripped at the end.”
“How can you know that for sure?”
“I don’t,” replied Forbin with warmth. “No one does, but it’s a reasonable guess.”
“I’m not denying it, but in condemning the old setup as primitive, aren’t you forgetting something? Those Stone Age dinosaurs were Colossus’s parents. Just suppose they have all that ‘primitive’ knowledge still, locked up inside them: what they’ve done once, they can do again. Better, if Colossus is not seriously damaged, only stripped of its brain-store - might they not provide the first aid, the basic bricks, to rebuild?”
Momentarily hope fl
ared in Forbin, but he had experienced so many disappointments that the flame quickly died. “A mad dream, Ted. Mad. Think of the damage down there, beneath our feet-“
“You don’t wanta believe, do you?” retorted Blake angrily. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our buddy’s ability for self-redesign? What’s so different about repair?”
“Easy, Ted.” Forbin was apprehensive. “Just supposing you are right and it was possible to reconnect the old stations to Colossus. The Martians would know the next time they checked out down there.”
“Now who’s being defeatist?” shouted Blake. “And you can stop thinking about bugs. You’re so right, I’m festooned with them - all inactive! You seem to forget these bastards learned all they know about us from radio and TV programs - not what you’d call a balanced education, would you?”
“TV’s not all late shows. There’ve been plenty of degree courses.”
“In bugging? See reason, Charles.” He got back to his theme, “If my hunch - okay, that’s all it is - is right, you must see we have a chance.”
Forbin saw only the frightening difficulties, and rated them insuperable: his expression said it for him.
“Okay, so we do nothing.”
“Don’t be a bloody fool!” Forbin replied angrily. “We can do nothing! Just suppose the old stations have their memories intact, what then? Reopen the lines - forget the Martians for a moment - to Colossus? Let’s assume we do, where does the input go? Colossus is just a first-class computer, no more. Ninety percent is cut out. There’s no storage.” He laughed bitterly. “And what about time? Even if we have the capacity to redevelop, we’d need days, maybe weeks. Each hour there’d be the increasing risk of a Martian checkout. If taking the cold view is being defeatist, right, I’m defeatist.”
Blake growled.
“And another thing, Ted,” Forbin went on, “we can’t be sure that reactivation would not poop off the entire armory.”
“That’s a risk I’d take.” Blake looked steadily at his boss. “I mean it. If the worst happens, we’ll have jumped in the fire, but is the alternative so good? We’re on the griddle now! Also, I don’t happen to believe the armory would be activated. Both stations were slaves of Colossus; updated and rehooked, the baby downstairs would be no reason for taking out humanity.”
“No. It’s all very well for you to lie here in your ivory tower - your description, not mine but I think - and I have to say it - I think you haven’t thought this thing through.”
Blake took that in silence; the pre-Martian Blake would have reacted very differently. He answered quietly, reasonably. “To a point, you are right, but not quite, Charles. I have thought a bit further. Right, so all your objections are mine, too, except about the risk of a nuclear drench, but here’s another idea: suppose we keep Colossus out of it, reactivate the old USNA/Russian stations, relink their cable communications, and feed in all we have on the Martians?”
“Supposing - for a start - their memory banks are stripped?”
“We’ll have lost.” Blake took a cigar from a box on his bedside table, sniffed it, grimaced, and put it back. “Yes.” he said less flatly, “we’d have lost - but at least we’d have tried!”
“And how would you get into either of the stations? Good God, we of all people know the work that went into proofing them against any human interference!”
“Oh sure, but with the power switched off, there’s no reason why we don’t cut through the cement walls. They’re not that strong - no need to be, with power on. Just one microtouch on the reinforcing mesh - and bang! Not now: hit the mesh with a three-kilo sledge, and apart from a loud twanging sound - nothing.”
Forbin got off Blake’s bed and paced up and down, Blake watching intently. Suddenly he wheeled. “Again, just supposing it worked, have you thought it through? For a start, whoever did the job would have to be very familiar with the old layout. With power on, one false move and we still get that nuclear ‘drench,’ as you so graphically put it.”
Blake nodded.
“It would have to be one of the Old Guard: there’s not so many left. Cleo -” He faltered at the thought of his wife. “No matter, no matter… . Fisher’s dead. That leaves you, me, and perhaps Fultone.”
“Fultone’s out, we both know that. He has to stay with Condiv.”
“Which leaves us. You’re not fit, and I can’t, won’t go.” Forbin spoke with complete finality.
“I don’t see why, Charles. From what you’ve said, this goddam Collector is going ahead only too fast. You don’t have to stand over Fultone. As Ruler, you have other things on your plate. You’d only be gone forty-eight hours.”
Forbin attacked from a different angle.
“Earlier you said that you were right behind me as Ruler.”
“And I mean it!”
“I’m glad to hear it, and assume it includes you as one of my subjects?”
Blake looked blankly at Forbin. “That doesn’t sound much like you, Charles, but yes, it does.”
“So you obey me?”
“Should I stand to attention?”
“Something slightly more difficult: you do the breakin.”
“Oh, come on, Charles-I’m sick. Anyway, no one could do the job as well as you.”
“Rubbish-and you know it!” Forbin smiled, but strain lurked in the corners of his mouth. “I order you!”
Blake stared back, both men in a battle of wits, not wills. “You must go,” he said doggedly. “I’m sick. It could finish me.”
Forbin smiled thinly. “Just now I said you hadn’t thought it out. I take that back. You have, haven’t you?”
His deputy was reluctant to answer. “Maybe.”
“Well, so have I, and I still say you go!”
“You’re crazy! You’re needed, not me!”
“Yes, I thought you’d seen it, but you’ll still do as you’re told, even if I have to send in a squad of men to take you!”
“You wouldn’t have the bloody gall!”
“Watch me,” said Forbin complacently. “At first I didn’t care overmuch for being Ruler, but I find it grows on one. It has advantages - like now.”
Blake changed his approach.’ ‘If I do it, promise me one thing-yes?”
“No.”
“You must!” Blake spoke urgently. “Promise me that if I can get the good word to you, you’ll move!”
Forbin shook his head. “In my place, would you?” Blake laughed grimly. “Too goddam right I would!”
“I doubt it. To run would take more guts than to stay - and do you really think I’d abandon my staff? In any case, this is all pure hypothesis. There’s nothing but a very slim chance.” He shrugged. “But you go, and that’s final.”
“You realize that would leave me -“
“Plus a reactivated USNA/USSR array.”
“Yeah, with that lot, but I’d have to step into your shoes.”
“A temporary state, while the parents built anew. Ted,” went on Forbin earnestly, “when you stormed into the Sanctum after pulling the switch on Colossus, you horrified me - personally, I mean. Now, after the Martian lesson, you’re a different man. You’ll do. So concentrate on your first problem, getting mobile. Good night!”
Alone, Blake pondered on their conversation. Neither of them bad mentioned what was the conclusion reached in their personal “thinking through” - or needed to.
If the old stations were updated with details of the Martian threat, their reaction was obvious: a megaton missile zeroed in on their child, Colossus.
Chapter XIII
AFTER LEAVING BLAKE, Forbin felt strangely lighthearted, more than half hoping Blake’s scheme would work. On the bad side, he would die-and so what? Sooner or later death must come, and although he waved aside his chest cramps, instinct told him he should rest if he wished to survive. But rest was an impossible dream. He was Ruler, Father of his people, and in the natural order of things a father must be prepared to sacrifice himself for his children. In the last ana
lysis, that was the basis of the respect children owed their father… .
And the good side? The Martians would be destroyed. He’d have to take damned good care the strike was when they were in the Sanctum; given one second’s warning, they’d be gone. What else? Well, the crippled Colossus and all the staff would go, too, but as a price for saving the world, that was nothing. Blake would face confusion, and until the parents could give birth to a new Colossus, Earth would have trouble. He’d have to leave a farewell message to the world, confirming Blake’s authority. It was ironical to think that Blake, who had sought to destroy Colossus, would be the most important human in the building of a new Master. Life played funny tricks… .
Walking along a corridor, he was dimly aware of a staff member, a female he thought, making obeisance. A month back he’d have blushed and run; even two weeks ago he’d have been mighty brusque. Now he was neither. Why not? The Sect might be silly in detail, but the general idea of a Superior Being - and his earthly representative - was that so bad?
Another passerby curtsied deeply and got a brief nod. He hardly noticed. Not that Joan minded: naturally Father had much to consider.
Although actively planning his own highly probable demise, Forbin hadn’t lost his euphoric feeling. Not even Fultone’s excited announcement that the first heavy sections of the Collector would be airlifted to the site next day dampened him, but the additional news that Condiv expected to make the first test-run in a week was chilling.
A week! It was all going much too fast. Blake could barely crawl out of his bed. … He prayed the damned thing would fly apart. Was there any preliminary work he could organize?
Forbin thought of the Zone where he’d spent so many years; it seemed a hazy, insubstantial dream of another world, and in a way it was. Technical and scientific memories remained sharp, exact, but the location of the commissariat and the equipment stores eluded him. He’d only to call the Commander, Secure Zone Guard, to be told, but the Ruler inquiring about the stock of thermal lances and hand-drills would cause undesirable speculation. Perhaps Blake knew.