O Master Caliban

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “Ugh.” But he got me.

  “Though if he was as good as you say, they should have turned out better. They looked like a botch.”

  “The lab techs wouldn’t have left one with a harelip,” said Esther. “What’s the matter, Shirvanian? You feeling worse?”

  “The things in the cage. I didn’t like them.”

  “I don’t think they were meant to be liked. They didn’t even like each other.”

  “What they were doing ...”

  Esther reached over to pull the blanket around his head and tuck it tighter. “Usually it goes with affection, and maybe even love. Wait and see.”

  “I won’t—” Shirvanian began, and pulled his lips tight.

  Mitzi said through a yawn, “Shirvanian’s gonna build himself a mechanical girl when he grows up.”

  “Why not?” Shirvanian was not annoyed. “Long as she’s not like erg-Queen.”

  Shirvanian, friendless and adored focus of the family burning-glass at age six, had built himself a friend, a very small non-humanoid robot. It did what he wanted: raided the pantry for candy, stole components from warehouses to repair his other machines, composed excuses for tardiness and bed-wetting. His parents had seized upon it and entered it in a competition where it won scholarships, respectful tutors, advanced degrees, more adoration. He despised his parents.

  He pushed Esther’s hands away. “Leave me alone.”

  “You yell for Mama when you’re in trouble, don’t you?”

  “You think you can read minds?”

  “No. I learned a little about kids. Why?”

  “I was thinking about ...” ... such a dangerous question. Why not? Why not? Why not?

  Being, you stupid child ...

  “I am not! and I do hate—”

  “What are you saying?”

  Winds gusted and the heavy lianas creaked around the trees. Spatters hissed in the fire. The night closed down.

  He pulled himself away and in, so tight his eyes crossed, half closed his lids, his jaws clenched. “The Dahlgren says.” The words pushed through his stiff lips. “Do you hate Mod Seven Seven Seven?”

  “Fever,” Esther muttered.

  “No!” He struggled with the blanket. “Oh no, no!”

  “Not you too!” Esther grabbed, tried to hold him. “You’ll get worse!”

  Sven said, “He’s full of solcillin. Let him chatter if he wants.”

  “All right, talk! But keep the blanket on.”

  Shirvanian squeezed his eyes shut and stuck his fingers in his ears. “Dahlgren says. I don’t hate. I despise.” He swallowed. “That is dangerous.”

  They waited, eyes on him, uncomprehending.

  Sweat-beads burst on his forehead. “Mod Dahlgren One says. She does not always control me. Oh, I know the being that hates her. Shirvanian says she broke my bird. Dahlgren moves away and is afraid of me. I will not hurt you Dahlgren. I am not made to hurt. Will you play chess? No I want to go to bed. Now. Mod Seven Seven Seven is coming. She can stop my being. I want to go on being. Dahlgren is correct: it is dangerous. Help. I cannot break. I must break circuit and clear this train of thought. Help! Please. Please?” The automaton voice ended, his eyes opened. “Think about something else, you stupid machine! Think of chess, you must have read books! Any page! The Middle Game in ...” He went limp, breathing hard. “He made it.”

  Esther wiped his forehead. “He’s cool.”

  Shirvanian’s voice was cold. “You thought I was delirious?”

  “Nobody knows what you’ve been saying,” Sven said. “Maybe you’d better tell us ignoramuses.”

  Shirvanian pulled in again and shivered. “I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  “I know we won’t like it,” said Esther. “But we better find out.”

  “Dahlgren’s alive, a prisoner.” Shirvanian licked his lips. “But she’s going to kill him, Mod Seven Seven Seven, the erg-Queen, she made the robot, the Dahlgren android she calls Mod Dahlgren One, to take his place at GalFed,” the words tumbled, “I’m not sure why, and she’s got them playing chess so the—the machine can learn what he’s, what Dahlgren’s like, but he learned, the Dahlgren robot, more than she wanted, so she doesn’t trust him, he thinks she’s going to turn him off and ... and, he asked for help ...” Shirvanian looked down and twisted the blanket-corner in his hands. “He picked me up on some kind of esp band, and he—he just called ... out ...”

  “A robot? Asked for help?”

  “Erg-Queen can read him, but he’s got more storage than she can monitor all the time ... she thinks she and the ergs did too good a job, made him too. Human.”

  “Shirvanian!” Sven cried. “Is it true? Is it real or are you dreaming? Do you know the difference?”

  Shirvanian beat his clenched fists together. “Did I turn off the servos? Was that dreaming? I’ve done all I could and you just think I’m some kind of dumb weird kid.”

  “I don’t think you’re dumb,” said Esther. “I just don’t understand a machine calling for help.”

  Shirvanian went on twisting the blanket. “I told him how to break the circuit ... I said you wouldn’t like it.”

  “That’s not what I don’t like,” said Esther. “Dahlgren ...”

  “Dahlgren is alive and a prisoner. I told you.” He looked straight at Sven and tears rose in his eyes. “Please?”

  The hot lead ran out of Sven’s heart. “I’ll take your word.”

  “But they’re going to kill him. That I don’t like,” said Esther.

  “And he did call for help. I mean Mod Dahlgren. I had to ...”

  “You helped because it’s a machine!” said Mitzi. “I think you’re one too! Maybe we ought to take you apart and find out!”

  “Mitzi, can’t you find yourself some kind of pill?”

  Esther picked up Shirvanian, clasped him round like a baby, and pulled back under the shelter. “Dahlgren is alive. So far.”

  Mitzi said, “If that thing can pick up Shirvanian it can find out whatever we’re planning. Do you think it’s going to be grateful for your help?”

  “Maybe not. But if that one gets knocked off there’ll be another. I’m sure of that.”

  Shirvanian did not struggle in Esther’s arms. He was too tired. He said through a yawn, “The Dahlgren-erg’s a prisoner too. It’s scared. Frightened machine, huh, scared of erg-Queen. He asked Dahlgren if he hated her. Found out he’d reached me. Asked for. Help ...”

  “But it’s more dangerous!” cried Mitzi. “Can you turn it off?”

  “Just like I can shut you up,” Shirvanian buzzed, and fell asleep.

  Esther put Shirvanian down. “I think there’s a spare knit bag in the pack. Fill it with some dry moss and shove it under him so he’ll have something to sweat on.” She turned to Sven, who was brooding by the fire with his arms circling his knees. “You feel a little better?”

  “They killed the others. They’ll kill him.”

  “Since he wasn’t controlling them it’s a miracle they haven’t killed him yet. They couldn’t have been planning to award him the Stainless Steel Medal. If,” she nodded toward Mitzi, “they find out our plans, we can make as many plans as they can make moves. In chess games there’s millions of moves and not many surprises.”

  “Yes,” said Joshua gently. “Just mistakes.”

  Sven slept with his questions. Dahlgren alive? Check mark. And a prisoner? Check. But four arms? The clones in the cage? Harelip? Erg-Dahlgren?

  The factory; the rads, 1 per hour now; if the ergs were not to kill him he was free to move among them without the transmitter—was Shirvanian safe with it? Suppose the plan had been changed and Shirvanian had simply unfolded their vulnerable sides? And Koz, painful, not to be trusted, his psyche enclosed in brittle shells?

  His thoughts did not even take dream shapes, but
extended and protracted in Euclidean nakedness. One light kiss, a shield, and his father living ...

  A teardrop wakened him.

  “It’s your watch,” Mitzi whispered. She knelt beside him.

  The fire was low. Yigal snored beside it, wrapped in waterproofing. In the shelter the sleepers huddled like fetuses, Esther in a tree, covered with leaves. The forest rustled, the mists waited to engulf their breathing space.

  He wiped her tear from his face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Her eyes swam, her hair was lit in gold whorls from the fire. “I killed a couple of bugs with stings. Something ran over my foot, I didn’t see what.” She had raw pink mold scars on her jaw and neck, round as coins.

  He sat up and stretched. She flung herself against him, knocked his wind out, and his arms went round her in reflex. She was shaking. He didn’t know what to say. “It’s not raining.”

  “I’m scared.” Her hands thrust under his clothes and ran up his back like small wild animals. He shivered with her.

  “It’s the universal condition.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I’m not.” He was trying to decide what to think, feel, or do At the moment he was as scared of Mitzi as of anything else. Her cold fingers pinched and kneaded his back; she had had practice. But the tears kept running. He picked her up and moved away a space, to a clump of ferns, and crouched among them. Some broke as he brushed them; some scratched. They had narrowed and sharpened into spines, a few into dark reddish thorns. The sobs ground in her throat, her hands worked writhing on his back; he pulled them away, gently, and her arms locked round his neck. “You have to sleep.”

  “I don’t, I can’t!”

  Her hair was in his eyes, nose, mouth; it smelled of the forest dampness. And the male snarled and slammed her away with his shoulder, very simple.

  “I have to watch ...”

  “We’re all going to die anyway, so what?” She unwound one arm from his neck, her hand snaked in and down the skin of his belly and coiled about him; he pulsed.

  “Mitzi ...” He was afraid of her and full of desire.

  She pulled at his clothes, ripped down the line of her magnetic snaps, found places and uses for all of his hands, took his mouth with her own. The rain held back for them. She carried him like a wave of the sea. Simple. He broke into sweat at the last shudder and glanced up at a movement near the fire.

  Ardagh had risen on one elbow and was looking at him. Immediately she lay back and pulled the cover over her head.

  He turned to Mitzi. Her eyes were closed, her mouth quirked. “First time I ever made it with a real freak,” she whispered.

  He pulled away. “You mean you haven’t tried Shirvanian?”

  She giggled, rolled into her poncho, and slept.

  He stayed on his knees, watching her. Thorns scratched his arms. His hand groped blindly and snapped off a thorn branch, brought it in front of his eyes. He had a hideous impulse to rake it down his groin. The thought gave him a different shiver and he flung it away and put his twisted clothes in order. He had hours to watch. What was he to think and do?

  Only in dreams had he believed he would have sexual experience. He had had an experience. He looked at it straight, and at Mitzi, folded in sleep with her poison mouth curled in peculiar pleasure. Remembering that he had believed his father controlled the robots, he looked carefully to avoid the fear and revulsion that might curdle in him later and embitter his spirit.

  At length he picked her up and dumped her in his place under the shelter. And laughed. He wouldn’t have to be afraid of dying without it.

  Toward the end of that long watch, Ardagh, who was next in line, got up without looking at or speaking to Sven, and poked up the fire to boil water. She hunkered before it, watching the bubbles gathering in the bottom of the translucent boiling-bag.

  Sven shouldered through the mist and sat down beside her; she did not turn her head. He picked up the end of her heavy braid and brushed her cheek with it. “Ardagh ...”

  She twitched away. “You want more? Go jerk yourself off!”

  “Ardagh, don’t speak to me like that. I did nothing to hurt you. Or her.”

  “Oh, her! She’s everything-proof. You, you just fell in.”

  He grinned. “That’s right.”

  She shrugged irritably. “Men.”

  “And I got paid off with her thorny tongue, too. That make you feel better?”

  “Why should it? I’m just jealous. Not vindictive.”

  “You sure?”

  Her mouth pulled into the slightest of smiles. “No, I’m not sure. Not here.” Her eyes swung an arc around the steaming pit of the world. “You want some tea?” She took a tube from her pack and squirted it into the bag, turning the water first pale and then deep amber.

  “I’ve never drunk much, I’m not sure I like it, but ... will it keep me awake?”

  “With stale water and synthetic concentrate you won’t want to drink enough to keep awake.” She poked the collapsible mug to size. “Here.”

  He accepted half a mugful and drank, because he needed her, not sexually yet, but for loyalty to the day ahead, the day of the ergs. “I wonder how much news got out about your being missing. Your parents must be worried.”

  “I guess they would be.” She drank and watched the steam wisping past the plug in the bag’s spout. “I’ve been so tired, scared, and busy I’ve hardly thought about it.”

  “Goodnight, then. It’s been quiet so far.”

  “Oh yeah.” Low roll of thunder to the east, wind, endless animal noises, Yigal snoring like a buzz saw, Mitzi blubbering and ...

  The cut near his armpit pulled and throbbed. He could not comfort her or ask for comfort. She had been the most joyful of them all.

  And she had not worried about her parents either. None of them had.

  * * *

  Shirvanian woke last, by special dispensation, when they were half through breakfast. The first thing he said was, “The Middle Game in Chess isn’t enough.”

  “For what?” Esther asked.

  “Blocking erg-Queen from catching what the Dahlgren knows about us. He’s got to have his memory wiped or dismantled and stored somewhere else. Otherwise there’ll be more traps at that factory than we can handle.”

  “There hasn’t been any sign of a drone or skimmer for a long while,” Sven said.

  “They’ve been tracking, they knew where to set up a spy-eye, so It’s obvious they know we’re heading for the factory.”

  “Then Mod Dahlgren can’t tell them anything new.”

  “Only because we don’t know.”

  “Can’t you shield?”

  “Not when I’m scared,” said Shirvanian.

  The sun popped over the horizon like a bubble, the leaves stirred toward it and the mists writhed. It would be a hot day.

  “How can you wipe his memory?”

  “I can’t do it, he’s probably got millions of microcircuits in him. He’ll have to do it himself.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Shirvanian shrugged. “If you say so. He could do it with the computer, but he’s been asking it questions and erg-Queen told him to stay away. And he wouldn’t wipe completely anyway. That memory’s his individual part—what makes him, he’d say alive. My being. That’s what he calls it. He’s still got to use the computer to store. He needs access—and a code. Did you use the computer?”

  “Me? I was,” Sven smiled, “ten years old. What would I use a computer for?”

  “If you did you’d have a store and a private code. Did Dahlgren have one?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t know his code, though.”

  “Of course not! If I did I wouldn’t trust an erg with it.”

  Shirvanian wrapped his box in plastic film and pack
ed it. His eyes were far away. “I killed a machine yesterday. I’d kill erg-Queen, but I wouldn’t kill Mod Dahlgren more than I would a human being or an animal. He’s too good. Dahlgren and erg-Queen are both his enemies, and I’m the nearest thing to a friend he’s got ... I like machines more than human beings—”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  Shirvanian went on musing. “But I am a human being ... and if he went back to erg-Queen I’d be forced ... but I think he’s gone too far. I think he’s stuck with the human race.”

  “Don’t forget you are too.”

  “I’ve said so. We can’t do anything from here, and I wouldn’t risk bringing the ergs down on us. All I can do is give him a hint. He can’t keep using The Middle Game in Chess forever.”

  * * *

  Koz prayed, put away his idol, and helped Esther load Yigal. The girls stamped down embers from the fire. Sven and Joshua brushed earth and rubble into the latrine pit: Joshua had an ineradicable compulsion to keep the forest neat. “Maybe we won’t have rain for a while,” he said, glancing at the corpulent sun.

  Thunder rose in the west. Joshua called defiance to it in an unknown language and went to fetch his rainskin. As he was shrugging into it Sven noticed that the pull on the slide fastening was a small bronze triskelion.

  IF P-N4 had been risky for Dahlgren, his erg did not seem willing to follow up. With 13. B-N3 he backed away; Dahlgren played N-R4 to chase the Bishop and lay the ground for Pawn advance. Erg-Queen had left them alone, likely to prepare more deadly advances.

  Erg-Dahlgren said suddenly, “Your son is alive.”

  “I don’t suppose he will be so for long.”

  “She is planning to kill them all.”

  Dahlgren stared at the set. If he flung the pieces at the wall they would probably bounce.

  “Do not hate me, Dahlgren. Mod Seven Seven Seven is planning to replace me, and I think you would care for Mod Dahlgren Two even less.”

  “Why does she want to replace you?” Dahlgren asked indifferently. One machine or another meant death.