O Master Caliban

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  The bolts clacked, the door opened grating in its slide. Dahlgren’s heart sank even further and he did not look up. So erg-Dahlgren had been rebuffed. He muttered, “What did she say?”

  A coil looped round his wrist. YOU WILL COME.

  He yelled, twisted away from the servo and smashed his goon fist against the coil. It loosened, curved back and lashed forward again; he raised his right arm before his face in time to block the steel from circling his neck. It snaked his forearm instead and pulled again. YOU WILL COME NOW.

  “No!” Dahlgren roared. “I am not dressed!” He was in pajamas and barefoot.

  The servo absorbed this information in some dim manner for a quarter-minute. GET SHOES.

  Without releasing him the coil slackened enough to let Dahlgren grab his boots and zip them on. It pulled him out of the room, balking and stumbling down the gray corridor. He swore, in lingua, in Swedish, in half a dozen languages and dialects of the Twelveworlds, his anger sent sparks before his eyes. He was dragged as by a savage dog around a corner, down a ramp, along a hall toward a niche where the floor was a red square. Dahlgren recognized this. The erg pushed him in, touched a small button with the tip of its arm; the square descended into flooding light.

  In Design the ergs were tall silver mantises with complex sensor lenses. They were scanning electronic screens. Dahlgren caromed off the corners of their lecterns, grabbed at table legs, drawer pulls, lamp standards; his arms wrenched and he did not care; he was hysterical with rage. His tables, his records, his Designers, his very light mocked him with silent complicity. He braced himself against a standard and kicked at the coil with a boot heel, it loosened with a jerk and slid into the erg body. Freed, he flung himself at an insectile form, battered his fist at the cold light of the eye, screaming, “Don’t you understand?” although he himself did not know why it should. The silver creature did not move.

  He raced around desks to dodge the whipping coil, swung his arms knocking over whatever was loose, a few meters ahead of the skimming casters; knew where he was going and did not know: through the archway into the next room where the tables were stacked with the pink, brown, or reddish bodies of men and women—what? no, androids, for their faces were blank and unlined. And why? He was not mad enough. He realized that these would be erg-Dahlgren’s crew for the voyage outward to GalFed Central, all humanoid forms chosen by the ergs because they had one excellent template. O traitor Dahlgren!

  He wept, he wanted to beat at the still shapes, recognized in flashes a face here or there: Egon Klemm, the botanist, Evi Lindstrom, the ecologist, with her round face and fair cropped hair—and at the last, Haruni. He screamed, “Haruni! Are you going too?” Touched in passing the slack mouth he had poisoned with his food, stumbled down the aisle, slammed into heavy glass at the end, an immense wall of it, bruising cheekbone and forehead, stared down into a depth of greens and mist, far down and extending far, steamy wraiths eddying under a pink arc light of sun, unknown life forms twisting in the dark earth of a forest floor. His hands splayed on the glass, his ribs ground against it, his body jerked with every clench of his heart; he looked as he had looked five thousand times into the true Pit of Dahlgren’s World.

  Servos hummed behind him, a needle drove into the flesh of his hip. As his eyes darkened, he looked up and glimpsed in the reflection of the glass, great distances away, the mantis, picking up a sponge and polishing the lens of its cyclopean eye.

  * * *

  Erg-Dahlgren sat at the chessboard, read quivering brainwave and heartbeat. The man was alive, he did not know where. The door had been locked, so he had not escaped.

  Erg-Dahlgren knew a few rooms in the complex, a few pictures of worlds outside, a few ergs, one human being. He did not know how to behave in this situation. He had only two choices. He did not consider attempting to find Dahlgren: that was exacerbating the danger. He could remain quiet for fear of upsetting his precarious balance, or he could demand answers from erg-Queen. Demand? That was almost as risky as search. Answers? Those would be: WHY DO YOU WISH TO KNOW WHERE DAHLGREN IS? HE IS NO LONGER YOUR AFFAIR: YOU HAVE TOLD ME YOU LEARNED FROM HIM EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED TO KNOW.

  So I have done. But I also know his heartbeat.

  How would Dahlgren react, then? He had said, If necessary you must cringe. He had said, If necessary you must take my place.

  So I sense this heart and brain. I will not stop if they do; I need power sources, not blood. My attachment to Dahlgren is—what, emotional? You do not feel, said Dahlgren. Dahlgren said, You are my friend.

  He had learned loyalty first from erg-Queen, and then again from Dahlgren. The first depended on care for his safety, the second on identification. He did not know of love or courage except what he had seen in Dahlgren, and even Dahlgren had told him that many men would not give their lives for others. Yet he had said, You are the only friend, and erg-Queen had said, YOU CAN BE REPLACED.

  So I can. I am only a machine, like her. But I am in Dahlgren’s place, and in his image. I believe he would try to save another man.

  He called erg-Queen.

  SVEN WAS RIGHT; Shirvanian needed worry beads. When he had a piece of work to do with his hands he did not need to think: his hands thought for him. When he had to think with his hands empty he felt unraveled. Distraction had always been his problem. He did not care for his thumb, and he found nail-biting loathsome. As an infant he had disliked toys, and his first act after learning to walk at the advanced age of two was to flood forty-three apartments by trying to flush his teddybear down the toilet. He did not masturbate because his childish sexuality had immediately become absorbed by his hand-brain-machine complex. At five he had been intense about chess for a short time, but after spending an afternoon with his father’s first edition of Philidor’s Analyse du jeu des échecs, he had walked into a room full of people and perceived the floor as a chessboard and the men and women as pieces, when he found that he could not move them about with the force of his mind he had thrown a tantrum and given up chess.

  Now he lay in his bunk, bouncing slightly, quivering with fright. He would reach out and touch the great battlement, the nerve-complex of ergdom. The hive. The dynamo. The heart.

  He curled up on his left side and felt the pounding of his heart on the thin mattress. Eighty-seven per minute.

  After a while he caught the beating of erg-Dahlgren’s heart, a pump designed to circulate artificial blood in a coarse network of vessels mainly through head, arms and thorax. Steady seventy-two.

  Together the hearts created irritating dysrhythms: ricketa-Iubb-pocketa-tick-a-tick-dubb. He considered speeding up erg-Dahlgren’s heart to match his own and decided that would cause dismay. He read Dahlgren’s heart on the erg monitors. LibaTEEPlibaTEEPlibaTEEP. Fibrillating. The man needed quinidine.

  Now he had three of them going.

  Tick-liba-ricket-a-pock-a-TEEP-dubb.

  He thought of astrolabes and armillaries which had measured with their dials, circlets and pointing hands so many times within the time of Man. And he thought of the Queen with ergs moving about her in their orbits. Within the circlet of beating hearts he moved closer to Her Majesty of Machines.

  Terror rose in him and he let it wash over and subside. Terror was her force-field. He contemplated her, ten-armed and triple-crowned. She noticed no presence; she was incommunicado, self-absorbed. He surmounted revulsion, stepped within. Her being was a small electrical storm. She had no person, like the Dahlgren, an erg aware of having a body and a character. She had no more than the essences of ironic self-regard and pedantic sadism which had perhaps seeped in from her designers. She was a function of steel, silicon, germanium and selenium, and her passion for control was as mechanical as a baby’s grasping reflex. Her ambience was not female: only her shape suggested gender. Within her steel castellated wall he felt his thought rebounding, his heart constricting, and he withdrew quickly to breathe before the terror m
ounted again.

  Why is Dahlgren not here? erg-Dahlgren asked.

  Shirvanian closed down, shuddering. Opened again, immediately.

  HE IS SAFE. YOU HAVE SAID YOURSELF YOU DO NOT NEED HIM, erg-Queen said.

  Inside, where the circuits ran silent and motionless, Shirvanian waited, picking threads: (safe? where?) (IN THE PIT) (why?) (BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE THE ANIMALS ARE) where they used to keep the animals, Sven said.

  He was safe in my company, said erg-Dahlgren.

  BUT YOU WERE NOT. YOU WERE BEING DISTRACTED, AND I AM MUCH MORE CONCERNED WITH YOUR SECURITY THAN YOU ARE WITH HIS, she answered.

  This creature wants to save Dahlgren. Get away, idiot, before you’re broken! No, warning him is dangerous, and she must talk.

  “There are still a few days before lift-off, Mod 777, and I would like to be sure I have properly finished the task you set for me.

  BE SURE OF IT NOW, MOD DAHLGREN. THE DATE HAS MOVED UP AND YOU WILL LIFT OFF IN 30 HOURS.

  Erg-Dahlgren broke off in confusion momentarily and regained control. We will have no docking privileges if we arrive too early.

  NO TROUBLE. YOU WILL ORBIT UNTIL IT IS TIME TO SET OUT. THERE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH FUEL. THAT WAY EVERYONE WILL BE SECURE.

  (PARTICULARLY DAHLGREN BECAUSE HE AND THE)

  (Being! where are you?)

  Erg-Queen’s mind was a furiously busy control tower, and Mod Dahlgren’s urgent call came blurred and distant.

  Shit, said Shirvanian. Get out and shut up! I will speak to you when I can.

  He beat about her maze in a fury, trying to pick up that thread once more.

  Particularly Dahlgren, because he and the

  because he and the

  he and the others will be dead

  Naturally, as long as Mod Dahlgren is in orbit. All plans secure. Plenty of time. SHALL I KNOCK THEM OFF THE TRACK AND BURN THEM OR LET THEM CRAWL A LITTLE LONGER?

  Erg-Queen asked, DONT YOU AGREE, MOD DAHLGREN?

  And erg-Dahlgren answered, subdued, That seems a very wise move.

  Shirvanian left erg-Queen and through erg-Dahlgren’s eyes saw the chess pieces, shell and bone in their icy blocks.

  In the obvious move, B-N3, White will prevent the further advance of the pawns.

  And Black will attack ...

  Why not?

  Shirvanian walled erg-Dahlgren and himself with the beating of three hearts, and called, Mod Dahlgren, do you receive me?

  I do. There was no color to his thought, not fear, despair, or anger.

  Are you still willing to help Dahlgren?

  I am, but how? I am only her machine now.

  You were willing to go to Central and tell what has happened here.

  I will do that if I can, but I am afraid Dahlgren will die and so will you.

  Would you trust me with your—with your life, to save Dahlgren and us, as well as yourself?

  Pause. Small Solthree child, willful, selfish, and unstable ...

  I know all of that, Mod Dahlgren. But, like Dahlgren, I am also not a liar.

  Yes ... I will trust you.

  Good. For starters tell me what, if any, classes you know of in the station complex are not under direct control of Mod Seven Seven Seven.

  She controls all classes under maintenance, power source, defense ... she does not control trimmers.

  But they give orders to no one.

  That is correct. The only other classes that she does not control directly are those under Provisioner, because they took care of the personal needs of the humans working here, and are not often used now.

  List machines under Provisioner, with their lines of command.

  Erg-Dahlgren did so.

  Okay. Now you have to trust me an awful lot. When I tell you to do it, will you lie down on the bed and disconnect your power cells? That will leave you helpless for a while, and I can’t force you to do it, because you’re the one machine that’s so complicated I couldn’t possibly control you in any way. But I swear you will be reconnected soon.

  Being—

  My name is Shirvanian.

  Shirvanian ... I suppose I knew that once, before my memory was wiped. Shirvanian, I have taken risks to save your man and yourselves. I am the one you must trust now.

  It’s a deal, said Shirvanian.

  * * *

  He came up briefly out of that ocean of electricity where he felt he was drowning. Eyes closed, knees drawn up, hands clasped between them.

  “The box,” he whispered. Then squalled, “The box!”

  “Here it is, here!”

  He freed his hands, moved them without volition in the empty air.

  “Open your eyes.”

  “I can’t!”

  “What do you want?”

  “Control. Control ...”

  “It’s not here ... look in his bag ... all right, here it is.”

  But he had gone down again, hand + brain + machine, into the sea.

  PROVISIONER STILL controlled a dozen machines for various purposes: some kept down mold and gritty dust or maintained plumbing and vents, others supplied Dahlgren’s needs. But Provisioner’s most interesting employee was Clothier.

  Although it was one of the oldest machines on Dahlgren’s World, Clothier was almost as great a marvel as erg-Dahlgren. It was the only machine with an aesthetic sense; its storeroom was lined with thousands of bolts of texture, color and shimmering luminescence. In a small closed society where tempers frayed and morale faltered it soothed by dressing all inhabitants who wore clothes in a manner both suitable and pleasing. For those who, like Dahlgren, did not care if they wore old burlap it made sure the plain materials they chose fitted them with comfort and grace. Once in seven of Barrazan V’s years it had come out to clothe erg-Dahlgren and the android crew.

  * * *

  Engaged in routine activity with lift-off twenty-nine hours and counting, Provisioner suddenly began to spin and clatter, emitting alarm signals and battering everything it came into contact with. One of its own slaves got in the way, had its directional antennas broken off and it too started to spin. Both reeled around the corridors, knocking holes in walls and denting doors. The rest of the slaves, still powered but uncontrolled, trundled on in the ways they had been going, butted against walls, edged along them like blind rats in a maze ...

  Go ahead, said Shirvanian.

  Erg-Dahlgren wondered briefly if he ought to address the God of Machines and decided that the deity was likely controlled by erg-Queen. He unzipped his uniform, freed his left arm from both it and his undershirt, and lay on the bed. He lifted the bared arm, with his right hand pressed apart the seam in the flesh below the armpit, pulled out first the auxiliary power cell and then the ...

  * * *

  Clothier woke in its stall, summoned by an unknown and powerful voice.

  It clasped a heavy bolt of cloth on its back, ran silently down dark hallways, avoided the rampaging ergs by slipping down narrow service corridors, rolled into erg-Dahlgren’s room on thick tires. It snipped a square of cloth with its scissor arm, wrapped the power cells and replaced them in erg-Dahlgren’s body so that the connections did not touch, closed the flesh-seam, dressed the body, automatically ran a steel tendril over the rucked uniform to smooth it, pulled the board stiffener out of the bolt and took two minutes to shred it with a ripper, burn it with a heat-sealer and flush the ashes down the toilet. Then it rolled erg-Dahlgren into the cloth, clasped the now much heavier bolt on its back once more, skimmed back into its storeroom, reshelved its burden, turned down its power and waited.

  In the Dahlgrens’ room the vents blew away the odors of burning and the standing chessmen stared each other down across the board.

  * * *

  Something cold lapped at Dahlgren’s nose and lips. He opened his eyes. A big triangu
lar snakehead was touching him, snout to mouth. “For eating? Food?”

  He understood the words, though the narrow black-red tongue made hisses of all its consonants.

  “Food?”

  “I am not food,” Dahlgren murmured in his dream and raised his hand to touch the gray-scaled head. The pain in his joints assured him he was not dreaming. The hand remained poised. Grayhead flicked its tongue at it.

  “That is not food, stupid. That is only one more of Us,” said another voice.

  “It is like the Us in the cage. Why is it not in the cage?” Grayhead asked.

  Dahlgren sat up slowly. Very slowly, both from stiffness and caution. He had been lying among rocks and ferns, the arc sun overhead far away through mist. “The Pit,” he said.

  “The Place,” he was corrected.

  Grayhead was a long and many-coiled serpent with three or four pairs of useless webfeet ranged along its sides. The other speaker was a massive creature the size of a tree trunk with a narrow head and mouth, small red eyes, thick stumpy legs. Its ridged brown back reminded Dahlgren of tKlaa and nVrii.

  The lingua they spoke was a bit slurred because of the limitations of their mouths, but it also had the cadence of an indigenous dialect. He wondered how old they were, if they had predated the rebellion, in some secret place. As Sven had predated it, and the model of erg-Queen.

  They had not moved while he sat up, and he was glad they had agreed he was not food, but as he got to his knees they drew away.