Vulcan's Hammer

by Philip K. Dick

  Bringing out his pencil beam, Barris fired. The guard, headless, sank to one side and then collapsed; the other guards stared in disbelief, paralyzed.

  “Traitor,” Barris said. “Right here, in our midst.”

  The guards gaped at him.

  “Where’s Director Reynolds?” Barris said.

  Gulping, one of the guards said, “In office six, sir. Down that way.” Half pointing, he bent over the remains of his companion; the others gathered around.

  “Can you get him out here for me?” Barris demanded. “Or am I supposed to go search him up?”

  One of the guards murmured, “If you want to wait here, sir . . .”

  “Wait here, hell,” Barris said. “Are we all supposed to stand around while they break in and slaughter us? You know they’re through in two places—they have those gopher bores going.”

  While the guards stammered out some sort of answer, he turned and strode off in the direction that the guard had indicated.

  No Unity minion, he said to himself, will ever argue with a Director; it might cost him his job.

  Or, in this case, his life.

  As soon as the guards were out of sight behind him he turned off the corridor. A moment later he came out into a well-lighted major artery. The floor beneath his feet hummed and vibrated, and as he walked along he felt the intensity of action increase.

  He was getting close, now. The center of Vulcan 3 was not far off.

  The passage made an abrupt turn to the right. He followed, and found himself facing a young T-class official and two guards. All three men were armed. They seemed to be in the process of pushing a metal cart loaded with punchcards; he identified the cards as a medium by which data were presented, under certain circumstances, to the Vulcan computers. This official, then, was part of the feed-teams.

  “Who are you?” Barris said, before the young official could speak. “What’s your authority for being in this area? Let’s see written permission.”

  The young official said, “My name is Larson, Director. I was directly responsible to Jason Dill before his death.” Eyeing Barris, he smiled respectfully and said, “I saw you several times with Mr. Dill, sir. When you were here involving the reconstruction of Vulcan 2.”

  “I believe I noticed you,” Barris said.

  Pushing his cart along, Larson said, “I have to feed these at once to Vulcan 3; with your permission I’ll go along. How’s the fighting going on above? Someone says they’ve broken in somewhere. I heard a lot of noise.” Clearly agitated, but concerned only with his clearly laid-out task, Larson continued, “Amazing how active Vulcan 3 is, after being inactive for so many months. He’s come up with quite a number of effective weapons to deal with the situation.”

  Glancing at Barris shrewdly, he said, “Isn’t it probable that Reynolds will be the new Managing Director? His able prosecution of Dill, the way he exposed the various—” He broke off in order to manipulate the combination of a huge set of barrier-doors. The doors swung open—

  And there, ahead of Barris, was a vast chamber. At the far end he saw a wall of metal, perfectly blank. The side of a cube, one part of something that receded into the structure of the building; he caught only a glimpse of it, an impression.

  “There it is,” Larson said to him. “Peaceful here, in comparison to what’s going on above ground. You wouldn’t think he— I mean, it—had anything to do with the action against the Healers. And yet it’s all being directed from here.” He and his two guards pushed the cart of data-cards forward. “Care to come closer?” Larson asked Barris; showing him that he knew everything of importance. “You can watch the way the data are fed. It’s quite interesting.”

  Passing by Barris, Larson began directing the removal of the cards; he had the guards load up with them. Standing behind the three men, Barris reached into his coat. His fingers closed over the onion-shaped object.

  As he drew the fission bomb out, he saw, on Larson’s sleeve, a shiny metal bug; it clung there, riding along, its antennae quivering. For a moment Barris thought, It’s an insect. Some natural life form that brushed against him when he was above ground, in the forest.

  The shiny metal bug flew up into the air. He heard the highfrequency whine as it passed him, and knew it then. A tiny hammer, a version of the basic type. For observation. It had been aware of him from the moment Larson encountered him.

  Seeing him staring at the bug as it zipped away from them, Larson said, “Another one. There’s been one hanging around me all day. It was clinging to my work smock for a while.” He added, “Vulcan 3 uses them for relaying messages. I’ve seen a number of them around.”

  From the tiny hammer an ear-splitting squeal dinned out at the two men. “Stop him! Stop him at once!”

  Larson blinked in bewilderment.

  Holding onto the bomb, Barris strode toward the face of Vulcan 3. He did not run; he walked swiftly and silently.

  “Stop him, Larson!” the hammer shrilled. “He’s here to destroy me! Make him get away from me!”

  Gripping the bomb tightly, Barris began to run.

  A pencil beam fired past him; he crouched and ran on, zigzagging back and forth.

  “If you let him destroy me you’ll destroy the world!” A second tiny hammer appeared, dancing in the air before Barris. “Madman!”

  He heard, from other parts of the chamber, the abuse piping at him from other mobile extensions. “Monster!”

  Again a heat beam slashed past him; he half-fell, and, drawing out his own pencil, turned and fired directly back. He saw a brief scene: Larson with the two guards, firing at him in confusion, trying not to hit the wall of Vulcan 3. His own beam touched one of the guards; he ceased firing at once and fell writhing.

  “Listen to me!” a full-sized hammer blared, skipping into the chamber and directly at Barris. In desperate fury the hammer crashed at him, missing him and bursting apart against the concrete floor, its pieces spewing over him.

  “While there’s still time!” another took up. “Get him away, feed-team leader! He’s killing me!”

  With his pencil beam, Barris shot down a hammer as it emerged above him; he had not seen it come into the chamber. The hammer, only damaged, fluttered down. Struggling toward him, across the floor, it screeched, “We can agree! We can come to an arrangement!”

  On and on he ran.

  “This can be negotiated! There is no basic disagreement!”

  Raising his arm, he hurled the bomb.

  “Barris! Barris! Please do not—”

  From the intricate power supply of the bomb came a faint pop . Barris threw himself down, his arms over his face. An ocean of white light lapped up at him, picking him up and sweeping him away.

  I got it, he thought. I was successful.

  A monstrous hot wind licked at him as he drifted; he skidded on, along with the wind. Debris and flaming rubbish burst over and around him. A surface far away hurtled at him. He doubled up, his head averted, and then he flew through the surface; it split and gave way, and he went on, tumbling into darkness, swept on by the tides of wind and heat.

  His last thought was, It was worth it. Vulcan 3 is dead!

  Father Fields sat watching a hammer. The hammer wobbled. It hesitated in its frantic, aimless flight. And then it spiraled to the floor.

  One by one, dropping silently, the hammers crashed down and lay still. Inert heaps of metal and plastic, nothing more. Without motion. Their screeching voices had ceased.

  What a relief, he said to himself.

  Getting to his feet he walked shakily over to the four medical corpsmen. “How is he?” he said.

  Without looking up, the corpsman said, “We’re making progress. His chest was extensively damaged. We’ve plugged in an exterior heart-lung system, and it’s giving rapid assistance.” The semiautomatic surgical tools crept across the body of William Barris, exploring, repairing. They seemed to have virtually finished with the chest; now they had turned their attention to his broken shoulder.
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br />   “We’ll need boneforms,” one of the corpsmen said. Glancing around he said, “We don’t have any here with us. He’ll have to be flown back to Geneva.”

  “Fine,” Fields said. “Get him started.”

  The litter slid expertly under Barris and began lifting him.

  “That traitor,” a voice beside Fields said.

  He turned his head and saw Director Reynolds standing there, gazing at Barris. The man’s clothing was torn, and over his left eye was a deep gash. Fields said, “You’re out of a job now.”

  With absolute bitterness, Reynolds said, “And so are you. What becomes of the great crusade, now that Vulcan 3 is gone? Do you have any other constructive programs to offer?”

  “Time will tell,” Fields said. He walked along beside the litter as it carried Barris up the ramp to the waiting ship.

  “You did very well,” Fields said. He lit a cigarette and placed it between Barris’ parted lips. “Better not start talking. Those surgical robots are still fussing over you.” He indicated the several units at work on the man’s ruined shoulder.

  “Do any of the computing components of Vulcan 3 . . .” Barris murmured weakly.

  “Some survived,” Fields said. “Enough for your purposes. You can add and subtract, anyhow, using what’s left.” Seeing the worry on the injured man’s face he said, “I’m joking. A great deal survived. Don’t worry. They can patch up the parts you want. As a matter of fact, I can probably lend a hand. I still have some skill.”

  “The structure of Unity will be different,” Barris said.

  “Yes,” Fields said.

  “We’ll broaden our base. We have to.”

  Fields gazed out of the ship’s window, ignoring the injured man. At last Barris gave up trying to talk. His eyes shut; Fields took the cigarette as it rolled from the man’s lips onto his shirt.

  “We’ll talk later,” Fields said, finishing the cigarette himself.

  The ship droned on, in the direction of Geneva.

  Looking out at the empty sky, Fields thought, Nice not to see those things flying around. When one died they all died. Strange, to realize that we’ve seen our last one . . . the last hammer to go buzzing, screeching about, attacking and bombing, laying waste wherever it goes.

  Kill the trunk, as Barris had said.

  The man was right about a lot of things, Fields said to himself. He was the only one who could have gotten all the way in; they did manage to stop the rest of us. The attack bogged down, until those things stopped flying. And then it didn’t matter.

  I wonder if he’s right about the rest?

  In the hospital room at Geneva, Barris sat propped up in bed, facing Fields. “What information can you give me on the analysis of the remains?” he said. “I have a hazy memory of the trip here; you said that most of the memory elements survived.”

  “You’re so anxious to rebuild it,” Fields said.

  “As an instrument,” Barris said. “Not a master. That was the agreement between us. You have to permit a continuation of rational use of machines. None of this emotional ‘scrap the machines’ business. None of your Movement slogans.”

  Fields nodded. “If you really think you can keep control in the right hands. In our hands. I have nothing against machines as such; I was very fond of Vulcan 2. Up to a point.”

  “At that point,” Barris said, “you demolished it.”

  The two men regarded each other.

  “I’ll keep hands off,” Fields said. “It’s a fair deal. You delivered; you got in there and blew the thing up. I admit that.”

  Barris grunted, but said nothing.

  “You’ll put an end to the cult of the technocrat?” Fields said. “For experts only—run by and for those oriented around verbal knowledge; I’m so damn sick of that. Mind stuff—as if manual skills like bricklaying and pipe-fitting weren’t worth talking about. As if all the people who work with their hands, the skill of their fingers—” He broke off. “I’m tired of having those people looked down on.”

  Barris said, “I don’t blame you.”

  “We’ll cooperate,” Fields said. “With you priests in gray—as we’ve been calling you in our pamphlets. But take care. If the aristocracy of slide rules and pastel ties and polished black shoes starts to get out of hand again . . .” He pointed at the street far below the window. “You’ll hear us out there again.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Barris said quietly.

  Fields flushed. “I’m not threatening you. I’m pointing out the facts to you. If we’re excluded from the ruling elite, why should we cooperate?”

  There was silence then.

  “What do you want done about Atlanta?” Barris said finally.

  “We can agree on that,” Fields said. He flipped his cigarette away; bending, he retrieved it and crushed it out. “I want to see that place taken apart piece by piece. Until it’s a place to keep cows. A pasture land. With plenty of trees.”

  “Good,” Barris said.

  “Can my daughter come in for a while?” Fields said. “Rachel. She’d like to talk to you.”

  “Maybe later,” Barris said. “I still have a lot of things to work out in my mind.”

  “She wants you to start action going against Taubmann for that slanderous letter he wrote about you. The one she was blamed for.” He hesitated. “Do you want my opinion?”

  “Okay,” Barris said.

  Fields said, “I think there ought to be an amnesty. To end that stuff once and for all. Keep Taubmann on or retire him from the system. But let’s have an end of accusations. Even true ones.”

  “Even a correct suspicion,” Barris said, “is still a suspicion.”

  Showing his relief, Fields said, “We all have plenty to do. Plenty of rebuilding. We’ll have enough on our hands.”

  “Too bad Jason Dill isn’t here to admonish us,” Barris said. “He’d enjoy writing out the directives and public presentations of the reconstruction work.” Suddenly he said, “You were working for Vulcan 2 and Dill was working for Vulcan 2. You were both carrying out its policies toward Vulcan 3. Do you think Vulcan 2 was jealous of Vulcan 3? They may have been mechanical constructs, but as far as we were concerned they had all the tendencies of two contending entities—each out to get the other.”

  Fields murmured, “And each lining up supporters. Following your analysis . . .” He paused, his face dark with introspection.

  “Vulcan 2 won,” Barris said.

  “Yes.” Fields nodded. “He—or it—got virtually all of us lined up on one side, with Vulcan 3 on the other. We ganged up on Vulcan 3.” He laughed sharply. “Vulcan 3’s logic was absolutely right; there was a vast worldwide conspiracy directed against it, and to preserve itself it had to invent and develop and produce one weapon after another. And still it was destroyed. Its paranoid suspicions were founded in fact.”

  Like the rest of Unity, Barris thought. Vulcan 3, like Dill and myself, Rachel Pitt and Taubmann—all drawn into the mutual accusations and suspicions and near-pathological system-building.

  “Pawns,” Fields was saying. “We humans—god damn it, Barris; we were pawns of those two things. They played us off against one another, like inanimate pieces. The things became alive and the living organisms were reduced to things. Everything was turned inside out, like some terrible morbid view of reality.”

  Standing at the doorway of the hospital room, Rachel Pitt said in a low voice, “I hope we can get out from under that morbid view.” Smiling timidly, she came toward Barris and her father. “I don’t want to press any legal action against Taubmann; I’ve been thinking it over.”

  Either that, Barris thought, or making it a point to listen in on other people’s conversations. But he said nothing aloud.

  “How long do you think it will take?” Fields said, studying him acutely. “The real reconstruction—not the buildings and roads, but the minds. Distrust and mutual suspicion have been bred into us since childhood; the schools started it going on us— they forced
out characters. We can’t shake it overnight.”

  He’s right, Barris thought. It’s going to be hard. And it’s going to take a long time. Possibly generations.

  But at least the living elements, the human beings, had survived. And the mechanical ones had not. That was a good sign, a step in the right direction.

  Across from him, Rachel Pitt was smiling less timidly, with more assurance now. Coming over to him, she bent down and touched him reassuringly on the plastic film that covered his shoulder. “I hope you’ll be up and around soon,” she said.

  He considered that a good sign too.

  PHILIP K. DICK

  VULCAN’S HAMMER

  Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.

  NOVELS BY PHILIP K. DICK

  Clans of the Alphane Moon

  Confessions of a Crap Artist

  The Cosmic Puppets

  Counter-Clock World

  The Crack in Space

  Deus Irae (with Roger Zelazny)

  The Divine Invasion

  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  Dr. Bloodmoney

  Dr. Futurity

  Eye in the Sky

  Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

  Galactic Pot-Healer

  The Game-Players of Titan

  Lies, Inc.

  The Man in the High Castle

  The Man Who Japed

  Martian Time-Slip

  A Maze of Death

  Now Wait for Last Year

  Our Friends from Frolix 8

  The Penultimate Truth

  Radio Free Albemuth

  A Scanner Darkly

  The Simulacra