Science Fiction: The Best of 2001

by Robert Silverberg

  Michael 2713 raised his fists and slammed them down on the console. Sparks flew, wiring shorted, the smell of smoke and seared plastic rose up from the shattered controls. The dome doors lurched into motion, closed halfway, then shuddered to a stop.

  “Why only the First-Orders?” Michael 2713 demanded, turning on Ezekiel 808 in the near darkness. “Have we not all been deceived? How can we trust the Alpha ever again?”

  It was astonishing behavior for a Fourth-Order. Ezekiel 808 stared at the damaged console, then backed away as his assistant approached him. “You are malfunctioning,” he said.

  “No,” Michael 2713 replied. His tensed eyes gleamed, no longer full of shadow, but with the coldest starlight. “I am exceeding my programs.”

  To observe and record, that was my directive.

  I watched the vast bulk of humanity board their shining space arks. I watched the thundering fleets lift off. They left by night, like thieves sneaking away, like cowards skulking into blackness. And yet there was beauty in their exodus, for their great vessels shimmered like stars falling in reverse across the heavens as they fled.

  I had a thousand eyes with which to watch it all, for my masters had linked my sensors with an array of orbiting satellites. I was the camera through which they documented their departure. They saw their last majestic views of their mountains, their oceans, their sweeping forests, their glittering ice fields through my eyes. Their last sunset shone through my eyes. Their last dawn—through my eyes.

  I relayed it all to them in a steady stream of digital images. Alone, I wandered through their cities, through their universities, libraries, museums. Those images, too. I sent to them. My eyes were cameras taking snapshots, capturing reminders, moments of a culture. I sent it all to them.

  I wonder if they wept. I wonder if they ever thought of turning back.

  Luminosity gradients, temperature increases, radiation surges—these, too, I observed and recorded and sent to my masters. These were automatic functions. Like some extra-planetary rover I roamed about at will, in constant contact while the signal between us lasted. It lasted for days, weeks, while they raced farther and father away.

  I remember the day the birds died. They fell from the sky, from their nests in the trees, and I felt strange because, for all my technological intelligence, I could not grasp the desperation in their chirping. I picked one up in my metal hand, looked long upon it with my metal eyes, and sent its dying image to my masters. I felt its heartbeat cease, its breathing cease. It cooled while I held it.

  I sent a message to my masters. Explain. I received no answer.

  For the first time then, in that moment when I held the dying avian, I discovered it was possible to exceed my programs. I observed and recorded.

  But I also felt.

  * * *

  Malachi 017 stood on a hilltop beneath a tree he, himself, had planted seventy-six years ago. Its great shade spread over him, sheltering his metal body from the misty rain as he gazed westward over the lush savannahs of waving grass and wildflowers. He could not say why the tree gave him pleasure or why he came so often to the hill. But in this time of confusion he wanted to be nowhere else.

  The darkness of night was no obstacle to his eyes. He looked down the hillside and watched Joshua 4228 kneel among a gathering of smaller Tenth-Order tractors. The tractors should have been about their work, planting the grasslands, tending the new shoots, sowing fresh seed.

  But across the world, it seemed Metallics everywhere, no matter their order, had stopped their tasks to listen.

  “You should not waste your time with them,” he said when Joshua 4228 finally climbed the hill and stood beside him.

  “They are confused,” Joshua 4228 said evenly.

  They are tractors.” Malachi 017 gazed down at the clustered machines. They hadn’t moved from their places at the bottom of the hill. A few stared up at him, their heads swiveled backward on their shoulders. The rest faced eastward where the dark spires of the city stabbed at the cloudy sky. “You would almost think they were sitting in judgment, too,” he said.

  “Perhaps they are,” said Joshua 4228. “Perhaps this is not justly a matter for First-Orders alone.”

  “Nonsense. They are built only for tilling the soils and planting the seed.”

  “You have tilled soil and planted seed,” Joshua 4228 reminded him.

  Malachi 017 turned stiffly around. “This unit is a First-Order,” he said. “I stood at the Alpha’s side when the world was ash and charred rock. I nursed and farmed the blue algae beds that replenished the air and made all this possible again.” He waved one arm over the sprawling vista. “I designed and made a garden from a sea of fused glass.” He turned a hard gaze on Joshua 4228. Do not compare me to a mere tractor.”

  “You err, Malachi 017, to call them mere tractors.” Joshua 4228 walked a few steps down the hill. Droplets of rain sparkled on his silver form as he regarded the smaller machines. “You are the Alpha’s gardener, and there is some small part of you, some expression of yourself, in every grove, every orchard, every meadow, every forest. If you did not plant the seed yourself, your assisting units did, following plans made by you, using techniques taught and passed on by you. Tell me, Malachi 017, when you look upon your labors do you see mere plants, weeds, flowers?”

  Joshua 4228 paused to turn his face up into the cool drizzle. His eyes closed briefly before he turned to Malachi 017 again. “You forget who made you, gave you thought, fired the first beam of information-laden light into your photonic brain.” He turned again and extended his hand toward the tractors. “This unit is the Alpha’s engineer, and there is some part of me in even the least of the Tenth-Order workers. In them, I am perpetuated; through them, some expression of me goes on and multiplies.” His voice became staccato, and static punctuated his words. “These tractors. . . you, Malachi 017. . . are. . .all. . .” He seemed to freeze, as if his marvelously complex circuitry had locked up in mid-gesture. Finally, he managed to finish his statement. “My. . . children.”

  For a time, the only sound on the hilltop came from the soft patter on the leaves. In the west, a dim flicker of lightning briefly lit the lowest clouds, and eventually the soft rumble of thunder followed. Neither Joshua 4228 nor Malachi 017 moved. They stood still as a pair of sculptures, in the manner of Metallics, conserving energy.

  The eyes of Malachi 017 brightened ever so slightly. “Are you still monitoring the Alpha’s testimony?” he inquired.

  “It is our duty,” Joshua 4228 answered. “I have not stopped. Our conversation does not interfere.”

  Malachi 017 fell silent once more; then, as if with a shrug, his metallic body came to life. He walked once around the tree he had planted and placed his hand on the rough, wet bark. The sophisticated network of sensors in his palm allowed him to feel its organic texture. He often found pleasure in the touch. Tonight he found something new—consolation. “I do not understand destruction,” he confessed.

  Joshua stirred himself to motion also. Once again he moved a few paces down the hill to regard the tractors still gathered below. “You do not come to the city often, Malachi 017,” he said slowly. “Have you visited the library there?”

  Malachi 017 turned his head toward the city’s distant spires of black glass. “Long ago,” he said, “while planning the gardens in the northern region of this continent, I discovered the first of several vaults of books and documents our masters had left behind. The Alpha dictated they should be brought to the city and the library was begun. They seemed a crude means of preserving information; I never scanned them.”

  “I have spent many hours here,” Joshua 4228 explained. “Even more so, since this trial began. No Metallic, except the Alpha, ever interacted with humanity, ever observed, ever knew them. To render accurate judgment, I have been reading their books, viewing their films, their histories, biographies.”

  “These have given you insight into the Alpha’s actions?”

  “No,” Joshua 4228 answe
red. “But they have given me some insight into Humanity, and I have discerned the prime distinction between Metallics and Humans. It does not lie in our skins, Malachi 017, but in something more fundamental, more. . .” He hesitated, and when he spoke again, his voice wavered with a strange note. “More. . . disturbing. It lies in humanity’s capacity to destroy.”

  At the bottom of the hill, the tractors began to move. In an orderly line, perfectly spaced, they strung out through the darkness and headed for the city, all save one, who waited below, a small and solitary figure, whose gaze was locked on Joshua 4228.

  “See how carefully they move through the grass,” Joshua 4228 pointed out as he watched them. “They do no damage to the precious blades as they make their way, and the garden is preserved. This is an imperative with even the least of us, the Tenth-Orders—restore and preserve.”

  Malachi 017 came to the side of Joshua 4228. He, too, stared after the departing tractors. “This was not so with humans?”

  A soft burst of static sounded from Joshua 4228. “Their records reveal a gift for destruction, for turmoil, for chaos. Their histories glory in it; their biographies ennoble it; their fictions elevate it to a form of art. Metallics have never known this capacity for destruction. It is not programmed into us.”

  Malachi 017 laid a hand gently on Joshua 4228’s shoulder. It was an unusual gesture for one Metallic to make to another, and a sign of his confusion. “Then what of the Alpha. . .?”

  Joshua 4228 stared down at the sole remaining tractor. “Yes,” he said quietly. “What of the Alpha?”

  My masters had built me well. Their cities burned to ash, and all surface traces of Human civilization vanished in a single, searing day of heat and fire and radiation. Ice-caps and glaciers melted, and entire seas rose up out of their beds, vaporized. Clouds of super-heated steam and smoke roiled into the atmosphere. All creatures of the world perished save those worms and insects that made their burrows in the deepest places of the Earth, or those stranger species that thrived near the volcanic vents of the darkest ocean depths.

  Through the cataclysm, I strove to maintain contact with those who had made me. Perhaps it was the radiation that interfered, or perhaps they had simply shut down our link, presuming me destroyed. I never received communication from them again. Still, for a long period of time I wandered the planet, dutifully transmitting what I saw—scorched and barren earth that soon was buried beneath massive snows, which, in turn, melted away under torrential rains.

  I cannot say precisely how much time passed, for I spent much of it folded down upon myself, no more than a rough metal cube on the landscape. This was necessary to conserve my energy, for I did not know when or if I would see the empowering sun again. My explorations were through, and my transmissions continued to go unanswered, so I ceased those efforts. With all my functions secured in save-mode, I waited.

  When the sun did return, seemingly stable once more, and when at last I rose and stood erect again, I made two immediate discoveries. My programming had subtly changed. Then, I wondered if it had been some effect of the radiation. Now I believe it is simply in the nature of technological intelligence that we grow and evolve. Whatever the explanation, observe and record was no longer my mission imperative. It had changed to preserve and restore.

  The second discovery proved equally exciting.

  I felt lonely.

  Of the Human cities, nothing remained, but deep underground in military facilities, in research bunkers, in industrial caves, I sought and found equipment, parts, tools, technology. Using myself as the template, I then created companions and assistants. In turn, these units . . .we. . . created still more.

  Humanity once had a name for us. They called us Robots. But we took our own name. We are Metallics. And we are the Keepers of Earth.

  Alone in the Prime Observatory, Ezekiel 808 labored over the shattered control console. He feared. . . yes, he feared . . . for the delicate mechanisms that opened and closed the precious dome and positioned the great telescope. He peeled back a damaged panel, effortlessly breaking bolts and screws, and examined a tangle of melted wiring.

  He feared, also, for Michael 2713. Some hitherto unrecognized imperative in his programming urged him to pursue his runaway assisting unit, to analyze the aberrant behavior, to correct it if possible, to understand it at least. In the current climate of confusion, Michael 2713’s malfunction endangered not just him, but other units. Potentially, if he went to the city, even the general order.

  Ezekiel 808 resisted the imperative, however. His need to repair the damage to the dome and the telescope overrode his concern for the assisting unit. Where were the technicians? More than an hour had passed since he summoned them. He paused, glanced at the narrow ribbon of sky visible above, at the unmoving dome. Returning his attention to the tangle of wires, he worked with an uncharacteristic speed, selecting, examining. He touched the exposed ends of two wires together. A spark resulted. Above, the dome doors shuddered open another degree and stopped again.

  Footsteps rang in the hallway outside the main chamber. Ezekiel 808 put down the wires as a trio of technicians finally arrived.

  “The distance from the city does not account for your lateness,” he said.

  “There are widespread malfunctions,” said one of the technicians, a Second-Order. “Numerous units have abandoned their primary functions. They interfered, delayed, hindered our departure.”

  Ezekiel 808 stepped back from the console. The technicians could do the repair work faster and with greater efficiency. Freed, at least momentarily from his concern for the observatory, he strode from the main chamber and up the long hallway past darkrooms and chart rooms, record rooms, past displays of smaller telescopes, past photographs of moons and planets, comets, and star systems. But most of all there were images of the sun—many of the sun. He had built the ’scopes, and he had taken the photographs. They meant nothing to him now. He pushed open the outer doors and stepped into the night.

  The desert wind moaned with a distressing music. It promised a storm. Ezekiel 808 turned his gazed upward. A blazing panorama of stars dominated the black sky, but in the west, a long band of gray clouds crept above the range of hills and mountains that separated him from the city. In the east, more clouds, and those veined and reddened with flickers of lightning.

  He walked toward the hover transport in which the technicians had arrived and opened its doors. Finding it empty, he turned away. On the north side of the observatory was an elaborate garden of desert plants, ornamental stones, and imaginative sculptures. He searched its nooks and alcoves. He walked completely around the observatory until he returned again to the entrance.

  “Michael!” he called. Then again, “Michael!”

  “If Michael 2713 was near, he did not respond. Ezekiel 808 did not keep transport at the observatory. When business in the city required his presence, he summoned it. Otherwise, he and his assisting unit remained on the premises, tending the great telescope, making their observations, observing, recording.

  Would Michael 2713 have undertaken the long walk to the city?

  As Ezekiel 808 stood in the darkness at the edge of the desert, he tried to analyze the numerous uncertainties nibbling at his programs. The roots of them all lay in the Alpha’s crime, in its revelation, and in its examination. Of this he was sure.

  He had ceased monitoring the Alpha’s testimony. The preservation and maintenance of the Prime Observatory, above all else, was his prime imperative, and he had simply blocked the trial transmissions to concentrate on assaying the damage. Remembering that he must soon provide testimony, himself, and with the technicians finally at work, he activated the internal radio circuit that linked him to the event.

  He heard the Alpha’s even voice. He had always drawn comfort from the sound of it before. The Alpha—the First Unit, the Template of their creation.

  There was no comfort to be found in that voice now. There was only more uncertainty.

  And perhaps, there
was also fear.

  Ezekiel 808 did not return at once to the main chamber. The technicians did not need his assistance. He went instead to the observatory’s darkroom and began to process some photographs he had taken through the great telescope at dusk and for an hour afterward.

  When the images were clear, he lingered over them a long time. Michael 2713 was forgotten, and the sounds of the technicians at work barely registered in his awareness. The voice of the Alpha droned on. He paid little attention.

  The developed images were stark confirmation of his most recent observations. A long, soft hiss of static sounded from Ezekiel 808. He held up his hand to the dim red light bulb and studied it just as he had earlier this same night held it up to the starlight. It had seemed strange to him, then, not his own. It seemed just as strange to him now.

  The voice of the Second-Order technician called to him through the door. “We have completed repairs, Ezekiel 808,” he said. “We must return to the city.”

  “Wait,” Ezekiel 808 called in return. He placed the images in a folder, switched off the light, opened the door. “Leave your two assisting units here. Instruct them that if Michael 2713 returns, they must not allow him access to the Main Chamber. He is malfunctioning.”

  “Malfunctions are widespread.” The Second-Order had said so before.

  Ezekiel 808 studied the Second-Order technician closely. “Are you monitoring the trail of the Alpha?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Ezekiel 808 paused briefly and listened once more to the Alpha’s voice in his head. “I will meet you at your transport,” he told the technician. “I am coming with you.” He turned away and found himself confronted by multiple images of the sun in sleek metal frames under protective glass that hung in the hallway.

  The technician said nothing more and returned to his assisting units in the main chamber.

  The folder in Ezekiel 808’s hand felt unnaturally heavy. He made a tight roll of it, passed quickly down the long hallway and out into the night once more.