Store of Infinity

by Robert Sheckley

  It was autumn, time for harvesting and storing his crops. Perceveral went to work. With the robot’s removal, his own chronic propensity for accident returned briefly. He fought it back with fresh confidence. By the first snows, his work of storage and food preservation was done. And his year on Theta was coming to an end.

  He radioed a full report to Haskell on the planet’s risks, promises and potentialities, reported his treaty with the mole people, and recommended the planet for colonization. In two weeks, Haskell radioed back.

  “Good work,” he told Perceveral. “The board decided that Theta definitely fits our minimum-survival requirements. We’re sending out a colony ship at once.”

  “Then the test is over?” Perceveral asked.

  “Right. The ship should be there in about three months. I’ll probably take this batch out. My congratulations, Mr. Perceveral. You’re going to be the founding father of a brand-new colony!”

  Perceveral said, “Mr. Haskell, I don’t know how to thank you—”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” Haskell said. “Quite the contrary. By the way, how did you make out with the robot?”

  “I destroyed him,” Perceveral said. He described the killing of the mole and the subsequent events.

  “Hmm,” Haskell said.

  “You told me there was no rule against it.”

  “There isn’t. The robot was part of your equipment, just like the beamers and tents and food supplies. Like them, he was also part of your survival problems. You had a right to do anything you could about him.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Well, I just hope you really destroyed him. Those quality-control models are built to last, you know. They’ve got self-repair units and a strong sense of self-preservation. It’s damned hard to really knock one out.”

  “I think I succeeded,” Perceveral said.

  “I hope so. It would be embarrassing if the robot survived.”

  “Why? Would it come back for revenge?”

  “Certainly not. A robot has no emotions.”

  “Well?”

  “The trouble is this. The robot’s purpose was to cancel out any gains you made in survival-quality. It did, in various destructive ways.”

  “Sure. So, if it comes back, I’ll have to go through the whole business again.”

  “More. You’ve been separated from the robot for a few months now. If it’s still functioning, it’s been accumulating a backlog of accidents for you. All the destructive duties that it should have performed during those months—they’ll all have to be discharged before the robot can return to normal duties. See what I mean?”

  Perceveral cleared his throat nervously. “And of course he would discharge them as quickly as possible in order to get back to regular operation.”

  “Of course. Now look, the ship will be there in about three months. That’s the quickest we can make it. I suggest you make sure that robot is immobilized. We wouldn’t want to lose you now.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Perceveral said. “I’ll take care of it at once.”

  He equipped himself and hurried to the tunnels. The mole people guided him to the chasm after he explained the problem. Armed with blowtorch, hacksaw, sledge hammer, and cold chisel, Perceveral began a slow descent down the side of the precipice.

  At the bottom, he quickly located the spot where the robot had landed. There, wedged between two boulders, was a complete robotic arm, wrenched loose from the shoulder. Further on, he found fragments of a shattered eyecell. And he came across an empty cocoon of ripped and shredded rope.

  But the robot wasn’t there.

  Perceveral climbed back up the precipice, warned the moles and began to make what preparations he could.

  Nothing happened for twelve days. Then news was brought to him in the evening by a frightened mole. The robot had appeared again in the tunnels, stalking the dark passageways with a single eyecell glowing, expertly threading the maze into the main branch.

  The moles had prepared for his coming with ropes. But the robot had learned. He had avoided the silent dropping nooses and charged into the mole forces. He had killed six moles and sent the rest into flight.

  Perceveral nodded briefly at the news, dismissed the mole and continued working. He had set up his defenses in the tunnels. Now he had his four dead beamers disassembled on the table in front of him. Working without a manual, he was trying to interchange parts to produce one usable weapon.

  He worked late into the night, testing each component carefully before fitting it back into the casing. The tiny parts seemed to float before his eyes and his fingers felt like sausages. Very carefully, working with tweezers and a magnifying glass, he began reassembling the weapon.

  The radio suddenly blared into life.

  “Anton?” Haskell asked. “What about the robot?”

  “He’s coming,” said Perceveral.

  “I was afraid so. Now listen, I rushed through a priority call to the robot’s manufacturers. I had a hell of a fight with them, but I got their permission for you to deactivate the robot, and full instructions on how to do it.”

  “Thanks,” Perceveral said. “Hurry up, how’s it done?”

  “You’ll need the following equipment. A power source of two hundred volts delivered at twenty-five amps. Can your generator handle that?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “You’ll need a bar of copper, some silver wire and a probe made of some nonconductor such as wood. You set the stuff up in the following—”

  “I’ll never have time,” Perceveral said, “but tell me quickly.”

  His radio hummed loudly.

  “Haskell!” Perceveral cried.

  His radio went dead. Perceveral heard the sounds of breakage coming from the radio shack. Then the robot appeared in the doorway.

  The robot’s left arm and right eyecell were missing, but his self-repair units had sealed the damaged spots. He was colored a dull black now, with rust-streaks down his chest and flanks.

  Perceveral glanced down at the almost-completed beamer. He began fitting the final pieces into place.

  The robot walked toward him.

  “Go cut firewood,” Perceveral said, in as normal a tone as he could manage.

  The robot stopped, turned, picked up the axe, hesitated, and started out the door.

  Perceveral fitted in the final component, slid the cover into place and began screwing it down.

  The robot dropped the axe and turned again, struggling with contradictory commands. Perceveral hoped he might fuse some circuits in the conflict. But the robot made his decision and launched himself at Perceveral.

  Perceveral raised the beamer and pressed the trigger. The blast stopped the robot in mid-stride. His metallic skin began to glow a faint red.

  Then the beamer failed again.

  Perceveral cursed, hefted the heavy weapon and threw it at the robot’s remaining eyecell. It just missed, bouncing off his forehead.

  Dazed, the robot groped for him. Perceveral dodged his arm and fled from the cabin, toward the black mouth of the tunnel. As he entered, he looked back and saw the robot following.

  He walked several hundred yards down the tunnel. Then he turned on a flashlight and waited for the robot.

  He had thought the problem out carefully when he’d discovered that the robot had not been destroyed.

  His first idea naturally was flight. But the robot, traveling night and day, would easily overtake him. Nor could he dodge aimlessly in and out of the maze of tunnels. He would have to stop and eat, drink and sleep. The robot wouldn’t have to stop for anything.

  Therefore he had arranged a series of traps in the tunnels and had staked everything on them. One of them was bound to work. He was sure of it.

  But even as he told himself this, Perceveral shivered, thinking of the accumulation of accidents that the robot had for him—the months of broken arms and fractured ribs, wrenched ankles, slashes, cuts, bites, infections, and diseases. All of which the robot
would hound him into as rapidly as possible, in order to get back to normal routine.

  He would never survive the robot’s backlog. His traps had to work!

  Soon he heard the robot’s thundering footsteps. Then the robot appeared, saw him, and lumbered forward.

  Perceveral sprinted down a tunnel, then turned into a smaller tunnel. The robot followed, gaining slightly.

  When Perceveral reached a distinctive outcropping of rock, he looked back to gauge the robot’s position. Then he tugged a cord he had concealed behind the rock.

  The roof of the tunnel collapsed, releasing tons of dirt and rock over the robot.

  If the robot had continued for another step, he would have been buried. But appraising the situation instantly, he whirled and leaped back. Dirt showered him, and small rocks bounced off his head and shoulders. But the main fall missed him.

  When the last pebble had fallen, the robot climbed over the mound of debris and continued the pursuit.

  Perceveral was growing short of wind. He was disappointed at the failure of the trap. But, he reminded himself, he had a better one ahead. The next would surely finish off the implacable machine.

  They ran down a winding tunnel lit only by occasional flashes from Perceveral’s flashlight. The robot began gaining again. Perceveral reached a straight stretch and put on a burst of speed.

  He crossed a patch of ground that looked exactly like any other patch. But as the robot thundered over it, the ground gave way. Perceveral had calculated it carefully. The trap, which held under his weight, yielded at once under the robot’s bulk.

  The robot thrashed for a handhold. Dirt trickled through his fingers and he slid into the trap that Perceveral had dug, a pit with sloping sides that came together like a great funnel, designed to keep the robot immovably wedged at the bottom.

  The robot, however, flung both his legs wide, almost at right angles to his body. His joints creaked as his heels bit into the sloping sides-, they sagged under his weight, but held. He was able to stop himself before reaching the bottom, with both legs stiffly outspread and pressed into the soft dirt.

  The robot’s hand gouged deep handholds in the dirt. One leg retracted and found a foothold; then the other. Slowly the robot extricated himself, and Perceveral started running again.

  His breath came short and hard now and he was getting a stitch in his side. The robot gained more easily, and Perceveral had to strain to stay ahead.

  He had counted on those two traps. Now there was just one more left. A very good one, but risky to use.

  Perceveral forced himself to concentrate in spite of a growing dizziness. The last trap had to be calculated carefully. He passed a stone marked in white and switched off his flashlight. He began counting strides, slowing until the robot was directly behind him, its fingers inches from his neck.

  Eighteen—nineteen—twenty!

  On the twentieth step, Perceveral flung himself headfirst into the darkness. For seconds, he seemed to be floating in the air. Then he struck water in a flat, shallow dive, surfaced and waited.

  The robot had been too close behind to stop. There was a tremendous splash as he hit the surface of the underground lake-, a sound of furious splashings; and, finally, the sound of bubbles as the heavy robot sank beneath the surface.

  When he heard that, Perceveral struck out for the opposite shore. He made it and pulled himself out of the icy water. For minutes, he lay shuddering on the slimy rocks. Then he forced himself to climb further ashore on hands and knees, to a cache where he had stored firewood, matches, whiskey, blankets, and clothes.

  During the next hours, Perceveral dried himself, changed clothes and built a small fire. He ate and drank and watched the still surface of the underground lake. Days ago, he had tested with a hundred-foot line and found no bottom. Perhaps the lake was bottomless. More likely it fed into a swift-flowing underwater river that would pull the robot along for weeks and months. Perhaps…

  He heard a faint sound in the water and trained his flashlight in its direction. The robot’s head appeared, and then his shoulders and torso emerged.

  The lake was very evidently not bottomless. The robot must have walked across the bottom and climbed the steep slope on the opposite side.

  The robot began to climb the slimy rocks near shore. Perceveral wearily pulled himself to his feet and broke into a run.

  His last trap had failed him and his neurosis was closing in for the kill. Perceveral headed toward a tunnel exit. He wanted the end to come in sunlight.

  At a jolting dogtrot, Perceveral led the robot out of the tunnels toward a steep mountain slope. His breath felt like fire in his throat and his stomach muscles were knotted painfully. He ran with his eyes half-closed, dizzy from fatigue.

  His traps had failed. Why hadn’t he realized the certainty of their failure earlier? The robot was part of himself, his own neurosis moving to destroy him. And how can a man trick the trickiest part of himself? The right hand always finds out what the left hand is doing, and the cleverest of devices never fools the supreme fooler for long.

  He had gone about the thing in the wrong way, Perceveral thought, as he began to climb the mountain slope. The way to freedom is not through deception. It is…

  The robot clutched at his heel, reminding Perceveral of the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge. He pulled himself out of the way and bombarded the robot with stones. The robot brushed them aside and continued climbing.

  Perceveral cut diagonally across the steep rock face. The way to freedom, he told himself, is not through deception. That was bound to fail. The way out is through change! The way out is through conquest, not of the robot, but of what the robot represented.

  Himself!

  He was feeling lightheaded and his thoughts poured on unchecked. If, he insisted to himself, he could conquer his sense of kinship with the robot—then obviously the robot would no longer be his neurosis! It would simply be a neurosis, with no power over him.

  All he had to do was lose his neurosis—even for ten minutes—and the robot couldn’t harm him!

  All sense of fatigue left him and he was flooded with a supreme and intoxicating confidence. Boldly, he ran across a mass of jumbled rocks, a perfect place for a twisted ankle or a broken leg. A year ago, even a month ago, he would infallibly have had an accident. But the changed Perceveral, striding like a demigod, traversed the rocks without error.

  The robot, one-armed and one-eyed, doggedly took the accident upon himself. He tripped and sprawled at full length across the sharp rocks. When he picked himself up and resumed the chase, he was limping.

  Completely intoxicated but minutely watchful, Perceveral came to a granite wall, and leaped for a fingerhold that was no more than a gray shadow above him. For a heart-stopping second, he dangled in the air. Then, as his fingers began to slip, his foot found a hold. Without hesitation, he pulled himself up.

  The robot followed, his dry joints creaking loudly. He bent a finger out of commission making the climb that Perceveral should have failed.

  Perceveral leaped from boulder to boulder. The robot came after him, slipping and straining, drawing near. Perceveral didn’t care. The thought struck him that all his years of accident-proneness had gone into the making of this moment. The tide had turned now. He was at last what nature had intended him to be all along—an accident-proof man!

  The robot crawled after him up a dazzling surface of white rock. Perceveral, drunk with supreme confidence, pushed boulders into motion and shouted to create an avalanche.

  The rocks began to slide, and above him he heard a deep rumble. He dodged around a boulder, evaded the robot’s outflung arm and came to a dead end.

  He was in a small, shallow cave. The robot loomed in front of him, blocking the entrance, his iron fist pulled back.

  Perceveral burst into laughter at the sight of the poor, clumsy, accident-prone robot. Then the robot’s fist, driven by the full force of his body, shot out.

  Perceveral duc
ked, but it wasn’t necessary. The clumsy robot missed him anyhow, by at least half an inch. It was just the sort of mistake Perceveral had expected of the ridiculous accident-prone creature.

  The force of the swing carried the robot outward. He fought hard to regain his balance, poised on the lip of the cliff. Any normal man or robot would have regained it. But not the accident-prone robot. He fell on his face, smashing his last eyecell, and began to roll.

  Perceveral leaned out to accelerate the roll, then quickly crouched back inside the shallow cave. The avalanche completed the job for him, rolling a diminishing black dot down the dusty white mountainside and burying it under tons of stone.

  Perceveral watched it all, chuckling to himself. Then he began to ask himself what, exactly, he had been doing.

  And that was when he started to shake.

  Months later, Perceveral stood by the gangplank of the colony ship Cuchulain, watching the colonists step down into Theta’s midwinter sunshine. There were all types and kinds.

  They had all come to Theta for a chance at a new life. Each of them was vitally important at least to himself, and each deserved a fighting chance at survival, no matter what his potentialities.

  And he, Anton Perceveral, had scouted the minimum-survival requirements on Theta for these people; and had, in some measure, given hope and promise to the least capable among them—the incompetents who also wanted to live.

  He turned away from the stream of pioneers and entered the ship by a rear ladder. He walked down a corridor and entered Haskell’s cabin.

  “Well, Anton,” Haskell said, “how do they look to you?”

  “They seem like a nice group,” Perceveral said.

  “They are. Those people consider you their founding father, Anton. They want you here. Will you stay?”

  Perceveral said, “I consider Theta my home.”

  “Then it’s settled. I’ll just—”

  “Wait,” Perceveral said. “I’m not finished. I consider Theta my home. I want to settle here, marry, raise kids. But not yet.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’ve grown pretty fond of exploring,” Perceveral said. “I’d like to do some more of it. Maybe one or two more planets. Then I’ll settle down on Theta.”