The Automated Goliath
Page 13
“Drahk live alone in house,” George broke in. “Easy to gettic him. I take you.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said. “You see—it’s a cinch. Drahk alone in the house, not expecting any trouble. We materialize from nowhere. Four of us, armed, against one sitting duck. Why it’s downright unsporting of us.”
Gerry grinned. “Okay, let’s have a bash at it.”
Pete smiled wryly. “Charles Magellan, you’d talk a corpse into buying a life insurance policy. And yet, after over four years, will Drahk still be living in the same house? All right, all right, I’ll say it for you—the only way to find out is to go and see.”
Pinning Nunn down to the job of working out the calibrations for dial-setting for the maiden voyage was like trying to seize hold of a globe of water in a state of free fall. He trusted his own paper work. When the step from theory to practice had to be made, he became a lump of gelatine quivering with self-doubt. One thing, however, he had no doubt about; when I pressed the start button, he didn’t want to be within range of a possible atomic explosion.
He said, “I’ll have to check *he astronomical calculations with the observatory. I can take the night train—”
“You can check with them by visaphone,” I told him.
His gaze strayed to a seagull swooping past the window. Perhaps he was envying it its wings.
“The British Astronomical Association ought to be consulted—”
“I can raise them too.”
He gave in. And yet he got away with it. I spent a long afternoon studying the manual and the controls. Then I came out of the cave for a breather. The sun was becoming misty pink over the Atlantic, and Pete was approaching with the final figures.
“Okay, I’ve double checked them all,” he said. “It won’t take me long to put ‘em on the dials.”
“But I thought Nunn—”
“He’s left for the mainland. His son has been taken ill in Bristol.”
“I didn’t know he was married.”
“Neither did anyone else,” said Pete with a chuckle.
“Least of all, his wife,” I said over my shoulder as I went to round up Gerry and George. Pete was at work inside the ship when I returned with them. The ship was lit within, and looked cozy in the big, bare cavern.
Gerry glanced up at the rock ceiling and said, “Twenty-five million million miles—phooey! Nothing to it. It’s the first hundred feet that bothers me. Supposing we materialize inside that—halfway through?”
“Then even old Nunn will hear the bang,” I said, which amused him but not me. Graveyard humor never did take with me.
“All set,” called Pete.
We shuffled up the ramp. Inside, I performed step one in the manual, and the ramp duly became a door which sealed us in the puzzle box.
‘Puzzle box it was. We were surrounded by mysteries. For instance, one of the safety devices was an altimeter which ensured that the ship didn’t overstep a ten kilometer limit when approaching the planet of its destination. You were certain of at least that much margin of safety, and relieved of visions of the ship trying to materialize itself beneath a planetary crust.
How the altimeter could function while it, too, existed only as energy baffled me completely. I felt like an ape trying to resolve the impossible contradictions of wave guides. Or modern man trying to visualize the finite, infinite, bounded, boundless universe.
The big couch was roomy even for giant Prospero, but four of us—Gerry and George were both bulky—made a tight squeeze on it. I sat at the control panel end and scanned the TV screens which were depicting the cavern around us.
Then I took step two…
Step seventeen was press start button.
I took a deep breath, and pressed.
There was no sense of motion whatever. Just as though the TV had been switched to another channel, the screens immediately showed us another scene. A brilliant sun glared at us from one side. On the other, a seemingly walnut-sized planet hung against a silver-dotted black backdrop.
“Vathic,” said George, promptly, pushing a whiplike finger at it.
“Good shooting,” I said to Pete, with relief.
“Bad.” He looked pale. “We’re inside the orbit. Nunn and I aimed for about five hundred miles outside it. Lord, it’s a risky game! An even much worse miscalculation could have dumped us in Centauri’s chromosphere, and the altimeter wouldn’t have saved us from becoming a puff of steam.”
“Don’t unnerve me,” I said. “I’ve got to land her and I want to go in the right direction.”
But piloting the ship in space turned out to be simple compared with handling the starting program. The Revenge dropped towards Vathic like a well-oiled elevator.
And sunlit Nam-land seemed to rise to meet us. Neat patterns appeared and resolved themselves into evidences of nature under tight control. About a kilometer above ground level, I swung the ship into horizontal motion across them.
There was a green forest which was as carefully trimmed as a garden hedge. The acres of park land were ironed smooth, like one enormous putting green. A perfectly circular lake mirrored the circle of the sun. All the rough edges of nature had been sandpapered away. It was all too formal for my taste. But I wasn’t a Nam.
The horizon was noticeably nearer than Earth’s. Somehow I got the impression that the territory beyond curved away and down unnaturally steeply.
I commented, “Judging from the horizon, a smaller planet than Earth.”
George, studying the screens, said, “No. Vathic eggic like. We have come downic to brass tacks.”
That stymied even Pete for a while. Then he got it. “No, not smaller than Earth. Vathic is egg-shaped. We have come to the point—of the egg, that is. Hence the queer appearance of the horizon.”
“So? Well, where do we go from here, George?”
But George was undecided. The countryside, it appeared, was pretty much of the same pattern all over Nam-land, and so confusing. Finally he chose a direction and I turned the ship to follow it. We all began sliding across the couch, almost as though it had become glass. I had already been vaguely aware of this lessening of friction, but not till I’d been forced off the edge of the couch and tried to stand up did the cause dawn on me. My leg action initiated a slight and gentle rebound from the floor. I rose an inch or two, then settled again.
“Gravity here is rather less than we’ve been used to,” I said. “No much, but we’re noticing it.”
“So long as the gravity of the beer isn’t weaker in these parts, I’m not beefing,” said Gerry.
A Nam city lifted on the aberrant horizon. It was big, and George recognized it.
“Fronden.” He indicated we should pass it. We surveyed it as we did so. Again there was too much geometrical precision for my liking, a city made from the building blocks of a child Titan. Not one intriguingly winding street, never a soaring spire or flying buttress. Squares, cubes, matching crescents, streets straight as ruled lines, all white and clean as a tiled washroom.
Vehicles, relentlessly rectangular, moved in the streets like tiny colored boxes being pushed along. Pedestrians were few, and insect-small from this height. Nams? Makkees? Both?
George gazed at Fronden, his red eyes glowing like embers in a draft. For once he managed a sentence of near flawless English.
“Is it not a beautiful townic?”
“Does Drahk live there?” I asked tersely.
He said no, but near Murges, another town some fifty miles on. When we approached it, it was such a close twin to Fronden that I wondered how George could tell them apart. The two shining threads of a monorail system linked the cities, and George indicated the area where they ran like needles into the side of Murges.
“There.”
I headed the ship there, lessening altitude. At the city’s fringes were some small detached houses, regularly laid out like tombstones. George placed the tip of a white, snaky finger against the screen, selecting one. “Drahk his house.”
I landed the Revenge slowly but clumsily perhaps ten yards from the house and the long-restrained emotion boiled over and swamped ordered thought. I remember half-running, half-sliding down the ramp, needle-gun in hand., onto close-shorn, bright green grass. Then the atmosphere, which bore strange and dusty smells, caught me by the throat as fiercely as I wished to seize Drahk. I reeled, and fell to my knees, choking.
I heard Pete and Gerry coughing harshly somewhere close behind me.
Then the spasm passed almost as suddenly as it had come. Tear-blinded and gulping, I got to my feet and my head cleared quickly. I drove forward again in shallow, bounding strides, feeling as though I were crossing a trampoline; it was the weaker gravity. The door of the house was as black as Drahk’s soul. I kicked it viciously and it sprang open. I strode through in a mad fury, like Romeo seeking out Tybalt.
From room to room I went roaring, “Drahk! Drahk!”
And each room was empty—empty, it struck me belatedly, of everything. There was no single piece of furniture. The house was tenantless. Bitter with disappointment, I returned to the central hall and there encountered Pete and Gerry.
“He has moved out,” I said dully, after all the sound and fury.
“Then we had—” began Pete, and was cut short by the slam of the front door at the end of the hall. The sound echoed sharply around the bare walls.
And there had been no breath of wind.
I pushed between them and rushed to the door. It had neither handle nor window. I scrabbled at its edges. My fingernails tore. But the door was shut fast.
I turned slowly and looked questioningly at the others.
“I don’t like the smell of this,” said Pete. “What’s going on out there?”
He went striding into one of the rooms which had an outlook upon the ship. We caught up with him at the window. George was out there leaning like a sack of rubbish against the ship’s ramp, staring into the blue and cloudless sky. I thumped on the window to attract his attention. He turned his head, saw us, and moved not even one flabby finger. He appeared utterly disinterested.
I beckoned and yelled, “Come and open the door, you Danic dope! Let us out of here.”
Without change of expression, he returned to his contemplation of the sky.
“Hell’s bells!” I looked the window over. It was set solidly in its frame, not designed to be opened. I smashed at the pane with the butt of my needle-gun. It was as tough as bulletproof clearplast.
“George has either gone completely nuts or else he’s sold us down the river,” said Pete slowly.
A Makkee saucer, which obviously George had been watching approach, came floating down to land alongside the Revenge.
Pete sighed. “That does it. I’ll never fall for any more hard luck stories.”
“We’re all suckers,” I said bitterly. “Here comes Drahk.”
Three thickly-clothed Makkees were climbing out of the saucer. Drahk was the last. They came walking towards the house, passing George with no more than a glance. He remained as disinterested.
Two of the Makkees struck off somewhere around the front of the house. Drahk came right up to our window. His blank, black eyes showed no expression, not even triumph. After ten years, he looked exactly the same. He stared through the window at us as though we were fish in an aquarium.
I felt I should go crazy with the sheer frustration of being unable to get at him. I turned my back on him and walked out of the room.
“Look at him gloating, damn him!” I heard Gerry say.
I looked rapidly around the little house, but there was no way out. I called Pete and Gerry. “All we can do is rush them when they open the door.”
We stationed ourselves in the hall. But nobody was fool enough to open the door. Presently, from half-a-dozen points scattered around inside the house, there came pouring steam-white clouds of gas.
“We seem to have walked into a killing-bottle,” said Pete, and his voice shook a little.
“I’m sorry I got you two in this mess,” I said.
They both tried to answer but the clouds rolled over us, merging into a single big one filling the house. I tried not to breathe but soon had to. And at once the cloud seemed to darken into a black thundercloud which pressed suffocatingly around me until I could not see, nor hear, nor think…
Chapter 11
I awakened as from a long sleep, yawned, stretched my arms, and opened my eyes on a room I’d never seen before. Then I remembered.
“Good morning, Charles,” said Pete Butler, dryly, on my left.
“You feeling all right, old man?” from Gerry on my right.
I looked both ways and saw we were sitting in three straight-backed armchairs. Facing us across a crimson carpet was a desk with a vacant chair behind it. Beyond was a room-length window showing a panorama of a typical Nam city, cubism rampant, with green pastures on the horizon that seemed too near. The room was as hot as a smokehouse.
My head was clear but my legs were numb and my throat hurt when I said, “I see the court’s in session, but are we here to judge or be judged?”
“To be judged,” said Pete. “Drahk’s the judge. He was here a while ago, but he got tired of waiting for you to open your eyes and slipped out to the bar on the corner.”
“Let’s join him,” I said, and tried to stand. But my numbed legs only hung there like numbed legs. “Hell—I’m paralyzed!”
“Take it easy, old man,” said Gerry. “So are we.”
“Only from the waist down,” said Pete. “Drahk stood treat—a spinal injection all round. Except himself, of course. I gather we’re not permanently crippled. It’s just that he doesn’t want us to kick him to death before he’s had a chance to say his piece.”
“I’ll find some way to do it, nevertheless,” I said.
And then Drahk came back. He was wearing his indoor, lightweight suiting and looked as frail as a butterfly. He kept those hypnotic, pupil-less eyes directed unwaveringly at me as he seated himself at the desk. •
The reedy voice sounded across a decade, “Only a passing defeat, Magellan. I shall come back for you—remember?”
“I remember. Most of all, I remember Sarah Masters, whom you murdered.”
“Still the sentimentalist, Magellan? But I’m not really surprised at that. I was counting on your blind wish for revenge. I was too busy to come personally, so I sent my representative to fetch you; the Danic you call George.”
“That lying double-crosser!” said Pete bitterly.
“He’s not a complete liar. The only direct lie he told you was that he stole my ship. In fact, I provided it, together with full directions for reaching Earth—and you, Magellan. It is quite true that the Nams have been deported to the other side of this planet, where they and the Danics are in the last throes of mutual extermination. And my people occupy Nam-land in peace and comfort. It was true I captured George on the satellite station. And when he promised to bring you to my house, again he was not lying. This was, and is, my house, although I have retained it only as a trap for you. In the interim, I was offered better quarters here, at the heart of Murges, as you can see.”
“I still don’t get why he should do such a thing,” Pete muttered. “We trusted him and treated him decently. Yet you slaughter his people and he knows it.”
“Decency, justice—can’t you understand that such terms mean nothing outside your society? To other people they are simply empty ejaculations, like your swear words. The Danic owes nothing to you. If he can be said to owe anything, then it is to me. I took him from his cold, gloomy land and gave him a home here in the sunlight. The Danics have always thought of the Nam hemisphere as a kind of paradise from which they were eternally barred by accident of birth. I told George that if he would bring you, Magellan, to me, he would be the only Danic permitted to dwell in the sunlight for the rest of his Life. I d
id not, incidentally, hazard any guess as to the length of the rest of his life.”
“You mean you’ll kill him when it suits you,” I said. “Which will be any time now, since he’s finished his task and become as redundant as all the other Danics.”
“What I mean is my affair. You yourself have certainly become redundant. You’ve finished your task, which was to bring me Prospero’s spaceship. Thank you for that. I knew you would try to learn how to operate it, and hoped you would succeed. If you had failed, then George would have brought you back in my ship.”
“Your mistake—he wrecked it,” I said. “He’s a fool. But it doesn’t matter. With Prospero’s ship, and others patterned upon it, I can become more than a leader of the Makkees; I can become the leader. And with these new ships I shall immeasurably speed up our conquest of this galaxy—and begin to look to other galaxies. I could have killed you out of hand, Magellan, but I wanted you to know before you die how the small setback you gave me has, in actual fact, started me on the path to the greatest victory in the history of the Makkees.”
I said, with controlled calm, “Run along then, little man, up your path of destiny. By the way, you do know how to handle Prospero’s ship? It’s kind of complicated.”
For the first time, his gaze wandered from mine—and I began to hope.
He said, “Another reason I did not kill you at once is that before you die you are going to tell my technicians how to operate the ship. Also, you will describe the principles behind it.”
There was a silence. Then Gerry laughed. “You’ve picked the wrong man, Drahk, old boy. And I don’t know any more than Charles does. The clever people who do know how the ship works were too dam clever to come with us.”
Surreptitiously, with my elbow, I’d been feeling the shape of my coat pocket. The Little notebook of directions was still in it. The Makkees had taken our guns but apparently nothing else. My opinion of their intelligence fell.
I said, “That’s true. We’re not scientists. I suspect you Makkees aren’t, either—not in any real sense. You steal the inventions of races your ancestors doctored long ago, but you’ve lost the art of invention yourselves. You’ve been getting something for nothing for too long now; your minds have become flabby from lack of having to make any effort, from a surfeit of comfort. You’re a lot of lazy parasites. I doubt if you have a single creative scientist left among you.”