Chapter 6
We spun around. At the top of the beach’s gentle slope sat a figure in a kind of bucket chair that hadn’t been there two minutes ago. To me he looked like the king of the Zulus as I’d imagined him from an old Rider Haggard romance. Shining black and hairless, he was naked except for a harness of straps and pouches gleaming with studs.
His eyes had disconcertingly pale irises. His ears were hardly more than orifices. His feet and hands were strangely formed. With a little shock, I noted that his thumbs were as long as his fingers.
He was no malformed Negro. I sensed he belonged neither to our world nor our time. Like the He-Ancient in Shaw’s Methuselah, it was as though time had worked on him incessantly through whole geologic periods. He wore the authority of infinite experience.
He was patriarchal but not benevolent. He regarded us with weary, half-humorous contempt.
As usual, Bill was less impressed than I. “Who the devil are you?” he snapped.
“It’s not incumbent on me to explain myself to so-called homo sapiens. Push your boat out and leave my island.”
“Your island?”
“I took possession of it some years ago.”
“Are you a Makkee?” Bill demanded, producing Coney’s pistol.
The Ancient smiled briefly. “Evidently you’ve never seen a Makkee.” He looked at us intently in turn. “But you have.” He pointed to Coney. “The kuro is plain.”
We looked at Coney too. He remained expressionless.
“Look at his eyes,” said the Ancient. “That slightly distrait aspect means that he’s not wholly with us. He’s in a hypnotic trance the Makkees call the kuro. He’s acting under their implanted suggestions. It’s their traditional technique. How is it that the rest of you have escaped it?”
“We were immunized as kids,” said Bill shortly.
Pam clasped Coney’s hand. “I understand now, Arthur. It’s not your fault, poor man.”
Coney made no response.
The Ancient said, “You’ll have to watch him. Now, please go. Formerly, time meant nothing to me. But now, it so happens that I have little to spare. You’re wasting my time. Go. Leave my island.”
“Look here, Prospero,” said Bill, “we’re staying on your island for a bit, like it or not. We’re not going back out there to be shot up by flying saucers again.”
“What makes you imagine the Makkees were attacking you?”
“No imagination about it. They damn near sank us with a thunderbolt. They were gunning for us because we shanghaied this fellow, Coney, who’s their agent. And because they failed to hypnotize us too.”
“You surprise me, on two counts,” said the Ancient. “First, to learn that there are humans impervious to the Makkees’ mind control technique. Second, because I believed the Makkees were attacking me, not you. That’s why I set up a force shield.”
“The purple haze?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a shallow dome of force, around three miles in diameter, centered on the island. Nothing can penetrate it. The Makkees know that. That’s why their saucers went away. Still, it’s a nuisance. I didn’t want them to know I was on this planet. Now I’ve shown them I am, and given my position away too, because of you interlopers. Why did you have to pick on this island?”
“Why did you?” I countered. “You came here about sixteen years ago, didn’t you, in a kind of—I don’t know what—comet? Anyhow, a globe of white fire in appearance.”
“So I was observed then.”
“Then—and again earlier today. We saw you swimming. We saw your tracks on the beach here. And the Makkees had a pretty good idea that you were here, too.”
I explained how, in checking up, they’d come across The Flying Saucer of Moble Island story. And that Coney had begun to investigate it for them.
“I see,” said the Ancient thoughtfully. “They would have got on to me, in any case. I’ve been fighting them for a long time, but it’s plain I’m getting too old for it now. All right, I shan’t throw you back in the sea. Follow me.”
Then he, and the chair with him, seemed to vanish. I got the impression that they’d been snatched back over the crest of the slope.
“Maybe it was Prospero!” exclaimed Pam with a little gasp.
I climbed the slope and looked over. One of the big mossy rocks had split apart, and the halves swung wide on invisible hinges. They formed the mouth of a tunnel which sloped steeply into the rock of the island itself.
There was yellow light down there. Black against it, the Ancient came gliding up the ramp, still in his chair, which skimmed a bare inch above the ground. I could detect no means of propulsion.
He beckoned. “This way.”
I called to the others. Coney was reluctant to move, but Bill jabbed the pistol in his back and forced him on. Pam clung to Coney’s arm. Together we walked down the ramp into Prospero’s underground cell, and the rock healed magically behind us.
It was midnight. Outside, the force shield would be dimming the moon. And I was glad it was out there, keeping the Makkees at bay. For now I knew who they were.
The palaver had ended a half hour ago. We had all talked our share, but Prospero had talked most. I was dog-tired, and lay on one of Prospero’s soft couches in this womb-like shelter. But I couldn’t sleep. My head felt as though it would burst from trying to encompass all I’d learned.
We hadn’t been able to get our tongues around Prospero’s real name. We’d fallen back on Prospero, and he’d accepted it with humor. He knew about Prospero—and about most of Shakespeare’s plays—and a great deal more about the human race, its arts, languages, achievements, and history. And he had a pretty low opinion of it all.
He came from a small planet circling a sun on the far side of this galaxy. He was a lone explorer making an extensive tour of the galaxy. Too extensive, in fact; his wanderings had brought him close to the point of death 95,000 light-years from home.
He reckoned himself to be some two thousand Earth-years old, a normal span for his kind. But his heart had begun to miss beats, and would soon stop altogether. “Any year now,” he said.
He’d have preferred to die on his own planet, but he’d left it too late to return,. “Curiosity about the next planetary system always lured me on. The exploring itch has lately died away completely; that confirms I am dying.” .
So he cast around for a planet on which to spend his last few years, preferably a planet which reminded him of his own. It wasn’t easy to find. If the planets weren’t naturally inhospitable with poisonous atmospheres, then generally the Makkees had already moved in and had full control and there was no spot for him.
Earth was a compromise. It had drawbacks. It was infested with homo sapiens, a weak and stupid race, doomed to domination by the Makkees who had already prepared the ground for their eventual invasion and colonization. Its gravity was thrice that of his own planet, which meant that crawling was easier than walking. He overcame that by becoming literally chair-borne. And he could still exercise by sea-bathing; swimming was his favorite sport.
He settled on deserted Moble Island. The advance party of the Makkees were beginning to infiltrate, but from past experience he judged it would be twenty years before the mass invasion began. He expected to be dead by then. If not, it was doubtful whether the Makkees would stumble on his hideout.
He’d had trouble with the Makkees all the way. They just didn’t want him around. But his science was superior to theirs. He had weapons and a force shield to make them keep their distance. However, sometimes they tried to catch him by surprise. He’d thought they were attempting it again today.
“The locusts of space,” he called them. Their ambition was to colonize the whole galaxy and they’d been working at it for eons.
“Using ten million Coneys for tools,” nodded Bill.
“Countless millions.” Prospero stared at Coney, who’d sat quietly listening to this without any reaction at all. “It’s time we redeemed him,” said Prospero.
He began searching among the maze of electronic apparatus for which he obtained power by breaking down the atoms of sea water. Finally he ran to earth a gadget which looked like Bill’s old Luger.
“A circuit breaker,” he said. “There’s a powerful battery in the handle.”
Suddenly, he pressed it against the base of Coney’s neck and thumbed a button. Coney collapsed into a limp heap.
Pam started up. “If you’ve killed him—”
“Nonsense,” said Prospero. “He’ll recover soon, and then he’ll be a man again—not an automaton.”
He explained that an electrical discharge had passed through Coney’s brain, breaking the closed circuit of hypnotic suggestion for good and all. He added that other thought patterns would also be disturbed, and there would be initial confusion, but memory would reassert itself.
We waited till Coney came round. He recognized none of us at first, but gradually his mind became integrated and then alert. His eyes looked much brighter.
Pam watched him fondly. This was the real Coney, whom she’d never seen. He remembered her, though, smiled at her and drew her to him.
“The kuro has gone, you’ll observe,” said Prospero.
“Coney,” I said, “tell us about the Makkees and what they did to you.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, it’s rather a long story.”
It was. Coney had been employed in the Scientific Directorate at Plymouth. One day a new Director came, a scrawny man named Lucas, jaundiced-looking, with cold eyes that bored through you. He took over everything and everybody.
“At what point I became hypnotized, I don’t know,” said Coney. “I think it was a gradual thing. But I came to believe Lucas was infallibly right. And so was the Government. I presume something of this kind happened to lots of people when the Makkees took over the Government.”
“Well, we’re wise to their game now,” said Bill. “They’ve gone as far as they can go. They’ll learn they can’t push man around any more.”
Even seated, Prospero was as tall as Bill. His pale eyes-startling in that black face—stared straight into Bill’s for a moment.
Then he smiled suddenly and said, “For years I’ve been sampling this world’s television programs. If your race had any spirit once, it’s lost it now. Whatever happened to that glorious conquest of space program of a couple of decades back? Two crash landings on the moon, two failures to reach Venus. What since? A lot of fine talk. You’ve become a race of talkers. You sit back in armchairs and press buttons and don’t even have to reach for the next drink. And you talk of the coming conquest of other worlds. Imbeciles!
“Most of those other worlds were conquered by the Makkees when man was still half-ape. In fact, man himself was conquered at that time, and has only been living on sufferance since. On the surface the Makkees have been softened by automation, too. Physically, they’re frail and can’t stand hardship or cold. But their tenacity of purpose makes man a wind-blown puffball by comparison.”
Bill said, “Nobody with any sense would watch our TV programs, still less imagine they were representative. Idiots broadcast them—to idiots. I don’t wonder that section of the public was easy to hypnotize—it was hypnotized by TV already. But I’m pretty sure there are plenty of others like us who own our own souls. The hard core of mankind may have become disorganized from lack of a purpose. But faced with a challenge, it’ll become organized, all right. Wait and see.”
“Talk,” said Prospero cynically.
“You said man was conquered by the Makkees long ago,” said Coney. “What do you mean by that?”
“That, too,” said Prospero, “is a long story…But 111 tell you something of it.”
It was more than a long story; it was breathtaking. It seemed that the general humanoid form to which we, Prospero, and the Makkees themselves belonged, was a common one throughout the galaxy. The Makkees, cruising in their flying saucers, would seek it out in its primitive stages. They would subject batches of savages to a radiation which changed the pattern of their chromosomes. On part of that pattern was imposed a standard.
“Man,” said Prospero, “in his brief life is just a host to immortal chromosomes. He acts according to the pattern he receives and passes the pattern on, through the generations. The Makkees’ standard pattern runs thread-like from the original recipients through the common weave of humanity. Everyone that particular thread enters is compelled to become a certain kind of person. That person has the makeup of a born inventor.
“The near-ape who conceived the wheel, the axe, the hollowed tree trunk boat were driven by the same goad which kept Edison working and sleepless, spurred the same type from da Vinci to the Wright Brothers and on to the automation fanatics of today.
“Seeded oysters—little more,” said Prospero.
“But why?” Pam asked.
“So that the Makkees, in the fullness of time, could come and collect the full-grown pearl. That’s the way they’ve conquered most of the galaxy. A pearl to them is a whole new comfortable world, nicely warmed and furnished, ready for them to move in and take over. A fully automatic world, from food supplies to transport, heating, lighting, communications. Everything laid out so that they can live in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.”
A silence, while we absorbed this.
“England, at least, is too cold for them,” said Pam hopefully.
Prospero smiled. “Within a month, I predict, you’ll find England’s climate has changed. The heat will be equatorial. Unknowingly, your inventors have laid the ground work for weather control. Your great radio telescopes, your atomic power stations, your TV broadcasting stations and the visa-phone network—these are meant to be linked together in ways that haven’t occurred to you. Your mass-produced inventions, from automobiles to teleprinters, are only parts of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, designed to interlock and form the whole you call ‘Goliath.’ The Makkees long ago discovered the secret of success, which is to get others to do your work for you believing that they’re working for themselves.”
“Man, the sucker!” said Bill bitterly. “What happens to him when the Makkees move in?”
“Another change of chromosome pattern—and man simply ceases to breed. The present generation is the last generation. That’s been the fate of all conquered humanoid races so far.”
“Well, it’s not going to be the fate of this one,” I said. “To begin with, we’re not conquered yet. For another thing, I’m not so sure that original chromosome pattern took so well. Remember the Luddite riots—the Luddites who smashed the new power looms because they felt the machines would make them redundant. There’s still something of that spirit left. Damn it, we won’t let ourselves become redundant.”
“Hear, hear!” A chorus from Pam and Coney.
“And three rousing cheers, Junior,” said Bill. “Up, guards, and all that.”
“Talk,” said Prospero flatly. “There’s nothing you can do about it, and you know it.”
“We could with your help,” said Bill.
“No. I can’t help you. I’ve been fighting the Makkees most of my life. There can be no decisive victory over them. They’re too strong and too numerous. I’m too old and too tired to do more than keep on the defensive for the short time left to me.”
“Then hand your weapons over to us,” Bill suggested.
Prospero smiled derisively. “It would be like giving a monkey an atomic bomb. You lack the necessary mental equipment. Anyhow, why should I? Homo sapiens means less to me than the fish in the sea. I don’t care what happens to it. When I die, that’s the end of everything that matters to me.”
We stared at him.
“Such egocentricity must come from living alone too long,” I said.
“Homo sapiens has many weaknesses,” said Prospero. “The most despicable is hypocrisy. Everyone thinks only of himself. Why pretend otherwise?”
“Confucius, he say otherwise,” said Pam. “But it wouldn’t do any good to
give you a volume of Confucius, would it? You lack the necessary moral equipment.”
For once Prospero looked a little uncertain. He spread his peculiar hands. “The discussion has become illogical, and there’s no point to continuing it. I suggest we all get some sleep. Don’t worry about the Makkees tonight. The force shield is still there. You can sleep soundly.”
And, of course, I couldn’t sleep soundly. The discussion Still went on in my head, over and over.
I don’t think Prospero slept all that soundly, either. Next morning, he addressed us tiredly, “I’ve reached a decision. My spaceship is still available but I’ve no further use for it—I shall end my days here. You wouldn’t understand anything of its working; it becomes transformed into pure energy in transit. However, its controls can be pre-set to take you automatically to any of the nearer planets.
“I suggest Venus. I was tempted to settle there myself, because it’s free of Makkees. But it’s too unlike home, too sunless and sealess. Still, there’s flora and fauna. You can have some sort of life there, even start a tribe. But keep out of sight of the Makkees. Don’t ever let them know you exist.”
There was a long pause.
“That’s very good of you,” said Coney politely.
“So you’ve had a change of heart, Prospero,” said Pam.
“Meaningless phrase! I’ve not changed my attitude in the least. I’m losing nothing but your company, and I shall be glad to do that. I’ve lived as a lone wolf, and wish to die as one.”
“Thanks, all the same,” I said. “But I’m not going. Neither, I’m sure, are my friends.”
“Too true,” said Bill, and Coney and Pam nodded approvingly. ‘ Prospero was astonished. “Why not?”
“Because we have a job to do here, and we’re not running away from it,” said Coney. “We’ve got to do what we can to free our people from the Makkees.”
“Sprats against a whale!” scoffed Prospero.
“No,” I said. “Men against Goliath.”
So Bill became a Major again and I a Captain. All we had to do was find an army.
The Automated Goliath Page 7