The Automated Goliath

by William F. Temple

  He said, “Prospero’s missiles destroyed our ships, but you incited him to do that. It was to put down your rebellion that I withdrew our limited forces from other countries. If it flatters your ego, Magellan, you’re primarily responsible for the chaos in our plans. But Earth isn’t the only planet ripe for settlement. The fleet on its way here is twenty hours from a point where it can divert to another planetary system without loss of time. I could instruct it to do that, and get away from here within five minutes.

  “But then I should have to admit to failure. My pride forbids it. Therefore, within twenty hours I shall end this rebellion. I can do this in either of two ways. I can wipe out you and your friends, who are the ringleaders, and the rebellion will collapse. Or I can spare you and your friends on condition that you cooperate with us. You can have seats on our Council—under myself, of course, but that will still leave you with far wider power in the world than you can hope to achieve without our help.

  “And you like power over people, don’t you, Magellan? Even the little power which posing as a medium gave you. You had no scruples about defrauding the same public before which you now pose as a liberator. You should have no scruples about joining us.”

  “And sharing the fate of Sarah Masters?” I said deliberately.

  “We should have treated Sarah Masters well if she had stayed with us. But she betrayed us. She brought her fate upon herself. Remember that—as an example.”

  “I shall remember it, all right, Drahk. Now let’s talk some sense. I defrauded my people, but in return gave them hope at best, entertainment at worst. You will give them death. So there’s no comparison. So, far from joining you, I’m going to kill you if I get half a chance. So the only sensible thing for you to do is kill me first. Why don’t you? Because you know that won’t stop any people from coming after you. They think rather a lot of me; they’ll want vengeance. So you’d better do the next sensible thing—swallow your pride, reroute your fleet, get to hell out of here and stay away from Earth. If you ever return and I get hold of you, I’ll show you no mercy.”

  “Good man,” gasped Pete, white-faced but still true-blue Cambridge University all the way.

  Drahk said, “True, your men think a lot of you, Magellan. So while we hold you as hostage, we can keep them in check—probably until my reinforcements arrive. I’m a Makkee. I don’t give up very easily.”

  Neither do humans, once they’re roused, I thought. My men understood me well enough to know that I counted my safety nothing weighed against the safety of the human race. But I made no comment. Let Drahk continue to fool himself while I gained time. Covertly, I’d been testing my bonds and knew now I could get free of them. I’d been bound to my chair many times under test conditions as a medium, and was no mean escapologist.

  But it would take time. And there had to be a right moment.

  Willoughby called Drahk’s attention to one of the screens. The five men had reached the garden fence, deliberated, climbed over it. They were keeping to a beeline up the gradient of the great lawn. Cross had picked his men well.

  Drahk said something quietly and Willoughby turned a large dial on the control panel. Drahk was looking toward the window. I followed his gaze and saw the black fog dropping away down the garden like a swiftly ebbing tide.

  Drahk turned with an angry hiss, shoved Willoughby aside, and spun the dial in the opposite direction. The fog came flooding back higher than before, crept up to the base of the flying saucer, then stopped.

  Willoughby had been dumb enough to turn the dial the wrong way.

  Drahk had laid another few feet of fog over the heads of the men, which would delay them. But he was reaching the limit. If he raised the level much more, he would en-gulf himself also. The light-amplifying screens, naturally, would be useless when their operator couldn’t see them.

  Gerry Cross came steadily up the road alone, the camera tracking him. Soon, his head broke the surface. He stopped, with a surprised and relieved expression on his fat face. He looked around, taking his bearings.

  I’d described to him the appearance and layout of Moravia, the Makkees’ HQ, in case he had to take over operations. The road surface was now a couple of feet under fog, but this row of houses stood just out of it.

  Cross saw enough to satisfy him. He pulled back the safety catch of his rifle and began walking’ purposefully along the road towards us. He looked as though he were wading thigh-deep in black water. He was a good deal nearer than the men climbing the lawn in the darkness.

  Drahk strode over to my desk, took needle-guns from a drawer and distributed them to the other three Makkees, fluting instructions. He retained his ray gun. He glanced briefly at the window. This was a completely air-conditioned house and the window wasn’t made to be opened. It couldn’t be fired through. Needles wouldn’t penetrate clearplast, and neither, presumably, would the paralyzing rays in any effective strength.

  He beckoned the two nameless Makkees and hurried from the room. Willoughby remained to guard us. Keeping an eye on him, I worked quietly on the nylon ropes every time he looked at the screens. I tried to watch the screens too. I saw the trio split up on the fog-covered drive. Drahk remained there. The other two went around the side of the house, to the back. Through the window I saw them take up positions behind the massive saucer. They trained their needle-guns on the spot where they expected the five men to surface in the garden.

  Although my hands were nearly free, my ankles were still tied and time was running out. I was pretty anxious. I turned my head just in time to see Drahk throw himself down in the middle of the driveway. Like a Malayan river pirate, he lay submerged up to his mouth, waiting in ambush for his victim. He kept his ray gun concealed under the fog. From this point he commanded the gateway and part of the road. Now I understood why he’d raised the fog level by that small amount.

  And Gerry came plodding on along the road.

  Pete Butler exclaimed uselessly, “For heaven’s sake, Gerry, look out!”

  Willoughby tittered.

  I got my hands free. Willoughby’s whole attention was absorbed by the screen. As Gerry approached, Drahk crouched lower. Only the top of his head was visible, motionless as a stone.

  I worked desperately at my ankle bonds as Gerry reached the gateway of my own house, Hillcrest. To my surprise and relief he turned aside there and started walking up my driveway. I didn’t know what he had in mind and hadn’t time to think about it. The disappointed Willoughby showed signs of returning his attention to me.

  I slipped my wrists back through the loops which I’d left on the chair arms. To the casual glance they appeared still to be tied, but I could withdraw them when I chose. My ankles still weren’t quite free—another few seconds of work and they would be.

  Willoughby swung round to look at me, and then again his attention was diverted. From the fog lake in the garden the head of the first of the five men had begun to emerge. The two Makkees waiting behind the saucer hadn’t the sense to hold their fire. They both shot at the tiny target and missed. It ducked below the concealing blackness and on the screen I saw the little group backing down the slope in confusion.

  Then, faintly, I heard a sound which made me start with the shock of recognition—a blare from the Klaxon horn of my aged Rolls. It was muffled by the house but outside, splitting the silence of the fog, the harsh note could be heard a mile away.

  Automatically, the tracking camera had kept Cross in focus. There he was, sitting in the driving seat of my car just outside the garage. The note became intermittent. Gerry was sending Morse. He’d memorized the code and taught it to many of his men. It had been useful in action.

  Now it was useful again. He was telling his men, wandering and lost in the streets below, to follow the sound of the horn. On other screens I saw them beginning to do just that. Before long, a telling force would rally to him.

  Willoughby began hissing. He didn’t like the look of it. I’d freed my ankles now and was considering how to jump him. He
was nine or ten feet away on the wrong side of the big desk. I’d have to go round the desk to get at him and he’d hear, the first step I took on that hard marloneum floor.

  I’d have to do something soon for Drahk might return at any moment. He still lay waiting, but he’d lifted his head, trying to see why his victim hadn’t shown up. Also, he must be disturbed by the staccato hooting of the horn.

  The only hope seemed to be to stage a fake collapse. Maybe Willoughby would come to investigate—close enough for me to grab his gun arm. But he was a wary, suspicious type. He’d assume right away that I was shamming. The odds were that he wouldn’t venture within reaching distance of me.

  I was about to groan and sag when Pete, who’d been watching me, whispered fiercely, “Freeze him. Under the desk.”

  Willoughby spun around and pointed his gun down at Pete. “Be silent!” he hissed. “Another word and it will be your last.”

  Pete wisely shut up, which was unsettling, because I hadn’t grasped what he meant. Freeze Willoughby under the desk? I said it over to myself, and it remained pure nonsense.

  The moment Willoughby looked away, I peeped under the desk. In this time-and-motion study age, household controls were fitted within arm’s reach of one’s most frequented spot. This being the only chair, they were fitted under the desk. The moment I saw the air-conditioning knob, I got Pete’s idea.

  The room was at the tropical temperature the Makkees required for comfort. The range of the conditioner was wide; for high summer weather the room could be cooled almost to refrigeration. Circumspectly, I spun the knob back to that point. Then sat up and tried to look innocent.

  The thermometer mercury dropped as though the bulb had sprung a leak. I began to shiver a bit but Willoughby was shaking like a wall in an earthquake. Makkees just can’t take cold. He guessed what I’d done and pointed the gun my way.

  His teeth were chattering. “M-Magellan, turn the heat on again. Or I swear I’ll k-kill you.”

  “Steady, Willoughby, don’t get so het up. Let’s keep cool heads.”

  He aimed at my heart—roughly. “I shall give you f-five seconds.” He began to count down. It was a mistake. In five seconds the room temperature plummetted another fifteen degrees and all but paralyzed him.

  This was the moment. I cast off the loose bonds and scrambled madly sideways. His aim tried to follow me but his gun hand was shaking uncontrollably.

  Zip! He fired. The needle missed me by more than a yard. Then I tackled him and brought him down. His head hit the stone-hard floor with a loud crack. He lay still and blood began to seep from his ear.

  I went to free Pete. “Forget it now,” he said urgently. “Look—Drahk’s gone gunning for Gerry.”

  I glanced at the screens. Drahk had abandoned concealment and was heading along the road, ray gun in hand, towards my house. Unaware, Gerry was still sitting in my car, hooting away happily.

  Whole bunches of our men, fog-blinded but making for the common rendezvous, were feeling their way up the slopes on all sides of us. Some of them were pretty close now, but one thing was certain—Drahk was going to reach the rendezvous first.

  “Hell!” I went headlong for the door.

  “Hold it!” Pete yelled. “Lift the fog. Turn that dial.”

  I skated back to the control panel. It seemed Pete had taken over my thinking for me. I remembered the dial and which way to turn it. I turned it hard, and the black fog dropped away from the slopes of Hampstead as though it were being sucked into the ground.

  Drahk was exposed, a small isolated figure on the road along the crest, nearly surrounded by the riflemen below. An ideal target, but there was one small chance. He realized it and took it. The men had been in darkness for so long that the sudden drench of sunlight temporarily blinded them. Drahk spun around, hurled his gun away, put his head down and came sprinting back like a champion.

  His speed was surprising. All the same, the rifle bullets began to hum past him.

  “We’ve got him now,” I said to Pete triumphantly, and went hurrying down the long hall to the front door. It stood ajar, as Drahk had left it when he went out. I slipped behind it, and waited. There was a small panel of one-way glass in it for the scrutiny of visitors. Through it I could see the driveway and the front gate. I watched them, tense as an overwound clock. My hands kept closing and unclosing, ready to hook themselves around Drahk’s skinny neck as he came back through this door for sanctuary in his HQ.

  And then to squeeze, and squeeze…

  I waited, and no running figure reached the gateway and the drive remained empty.

  I was losing my touch. I’d miscalculated again somehow.

  I rushed out into the driveway. So far as I could see along the road there was no sign of Drahk. Rifle fire began at the back of the house and as suddenly stopped.

  Then I remembered the flying saucer parked there and the two Makkees guarding it. I cursed myself for a fool. Drahk had been heading for them. The driveway would have been an unnecessary detour; he’d climbed over the low fence fronting the road and cut diagonally across the garden.

  I cursed myself again for not stopping to bring Willoughby’s needle-gun. No time to go back for it. In a blind rage I ran out and around to the back of the house.

  In the shadow of the saucer one Makkee lay spread-eagled on his back, shot through the face. Two live Makkees were just disappearing through a closing aperture high up on the saucer. One of them was Drahk.

  I shouted stupidly, uselessly, as the aperture shut tight.

  The saucer rose slowly, hovered hugely over the house. It seemed to be spinning but that was an illusion. It reflected sunlight into my eyes, dazzlingly.

  Then Drahk’s voice came, strong and shrill through a loudhailer: “This is only a passing defeat, Magellan. You’ve won a skirmish, not a war. I shall come back for you—and I shall win the war.”

  The saucer flew up and veered away over London. Without interest I noted that the city lay clear and sharp in the sunlight. The disc shrank in the sky, became as small as the distant dome of St. Paul’s, dwindled further and became a shining point that vanished far to the south.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, stranded by the anticlimax, emptied by disappointment. The immediate pressure of action and excitement had anesthetized temporarily the pain that lay deep down.

  Presently Gerry Cross was there, and Pete Butler, rubbing the red rope marks on his wrists. Our men were appearing everywhere.

  “Well, that’s that, Charles,” said Gerry.

  “Willoughby’s dead,” said Pete. “His skull was very thin.”

  “Drahk got away,” I said dully.

  “And he won’t be back in a hurry after that reception, I’m thinking,” said Gerry.

  “He’ll be back,” I said. And inside, a voice cried, “But she can never come back!”

  The voice was right. Yet also, in a way, wrong.

  Pete said, “Look at that black dust over everything.”

  I looked listlessly at the garden. On the lawn I recognized, now among their friends, the five men who’d attacked from that direction. One of them was a good shot, anyhow. There was a thin scattering of what looked like soot all over the lawn and the slopes beyond as far as one could see. Later I saw it lying thicker in central London. It was all that remained of the black fog when the power which had sustained it was withdrawn.

  It was as-though the whole city were in mourning.

  “Pete,” I said, “I can’t go back there.”

  He knew what and where I meant. “I’ll take care of it,” he said quietly. “Look, Charles, get away from here. You need to rest up for a bit. You’re welcome to my apartment in the Albany. It’s central but quiet. Gerry will run you down there in your car.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Gerry sympathetically.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  Later in the day, Pete came down to the apartment. Gerry was still with me and we were on the second bottle of whisky
. The pain had been anesthetized again but remained a dull ache.

  Pete said, “Think I could use a drink, too.”

  I poured him a stiff one. After all, it was his whiskey.

  “Thanks. Well, we made a capture—got a prisoner.”

  We stared at him, a little blearily.

  “Thought there weren’t any Makkees left,” Gerry said.

  “We found this one in the basement of their HQ. He practically filled it. His name is Uvova. A robot. The biggest damn electronic brain you ever saw. When we find out how to handle him, he could be a useful ally. I’d like to take charge of him, Charles.”

  “The job’s yours, son.”

  “Thanks, Chief. Oh, by the way, I came across these on the bedside table up there. They seem to be personal. Thought I’d better not leave ‘em lying around.”

  He laid three notebooks, bound in red leather, on the wide chair arm beside me, very carefully avoiding my eyes and reaching for his drink again.

  I nodded. They were my journals. I hoped he hadn’t examined them too closely. But then, he was a gentleman, and gentlemen don’t pry.

  The three of us talked for a while, about Uvova, about Britain liberated, about other countries, about the Makkees, and about our next moves.

  But never about Sarah Masters.

  At length I went to bed. I was tired but couldn’t sleep, and lay there with my mind racing. Presently I turned on the light and looked for something to read. There was nothing but my own journals. Distastefully, I began flicking the leaves over. The confessions of a cheap trickster, a case of mild paranoia, poet manque, shallow thinker, and lonely man. A complete giveaway of myself.

  And then I began to sweat. The margins were full of comments in a feminine hand—it could only be Sarah’s. The earliest were brief, detached, witty, occasionally cruel. Gradually, they lengthened. While still humorous, they had less sting. Later, some argued my points quite seriously. And steadily they became more sympathetic and understanding.

  And, in the third volume, affectionate.

  On one page I read, and reread, “Charlie Magellan, you’re a dear old fool, and I think I love you.”