The Age of the Pussyfoot

Seventeen

The door opened with a thwack, and two coppers plunged into the room. One of them grabbed him, rather roughly, Forrester thought, and glared into his eyes. “Man Forrester!” it cried. “You are arrested on sufficient charges and need make no statement!”

As if he could, thought Forrester, whirled off his feet as the coppers flanked him, one on each side, and half carried him out into the corridor and down to the fly-in, where a police flier was waiting for him. He shouted to them, “Wait! What’s it all about?”

They did not answer, merely thrust him in and slammed the door. It must be the Sirian business, he thought sickly, staring back at them as they watched the flier bear him away. But why now? “I didn’t do anything!” he cried, knowing that he lied.

“That is to be determined, Man Forrester,” said a voice from a speaker grille over his head. “Meanwhile, please come with us.”

The “please” was totally sense-free, of course; Forrester had no choice. “But what did I do?” he begged.

“Your arrest has been ordered, Man Forrester,” said the quiet, unemotional voice of the central computation facility. “Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

“You bet!” Forrester stared around fearfully. There was no one at the controls, but there didn’t seem to be a need for anyone; the car was sliding rapidly through the air toward the lake front.

“Your arrest has been ordered, Man Forrester,” repeated the computer voice. “Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

“Damn it, I just said I did!” They were over blue water and moving fast. Forrester hammered the fleshy part of his fist against a window experimentally, but naturally enough the glass did not break. It was just as well, of course; there was no place for him to go.

“Your arrest,” said the computer voice calmly, “has been ordered, Man Forrester. Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

Forrester swore furiously and hopelessly. They were approaching a metal island in the lake, and the aircraft was dropping toward it. “All I want,” he said, “is to know what the devil’s going on. Joymaker! Can you tell me what this is all about?” But the mace clipped to his belt only said, “We are all the same, Man Forrester. Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

By the time the aircraft landed, Forrester had regained control of himself. Obviously something was wrong with the central computation facilities, but equally obviously there was nothing much he could do about it now. When two more coppers, waiting on the hardstand for the police car to alight, seized his arms and pulled him out of the door, he did not resist. The coppers’ grip was quite unbreakable, their strength far greater than his own.

He saw no human being and no other automata, while he was herded like livestock down through underground passages, under the lake waters, until finally he was pushed into a door that locked behind him.

He was in a cell. It held a bed, a chair, and a table, nothing else. Or nothing that was visible; its walls were mined with the usual electronic maze, however, because a voice said at once, “Man Forrester, message.”

“Drop sick,” said Forrester. “No, I don’t want a precis of the charge against me.”

But the message that followed was not the repetitious drone of the faulty machines. It was Taiko’s voice, and a wall of the cell sprang into light to show his face. “Hi, there, Chuck,” he said. “You said you wanted to see me.”

Forrester exhaled sharply. “Thank God,” he said. “Look, Taiko, something’s gone wrong with the machines, and I’m in jail!”

Taiko’s bland face creased in a smile. “Number one,” he said, “there’s nothing wrong with the machines—in fact, something’s going right with them! And, number two, of course you’re in jail. Who do you think brought you here?”

“Here? You mean you’re—”

Taiko grinned and nodded. “Not more’n fifty meters away, pal. Considering how messed up the computers are, the easiest way to get you here was to have you arrested. So I did. So now we come right down to it. Are you with the Ned Lud Society or are you against it? Because this is our chance. Everything’s so stirred up for fear of a Sirian invasion that we can straighten things out the right way. Know what I mean by the right way?”

“Smash the machines?” Forrester guessed. “You mean, you and I are going to break up the central computers?”

“Oh, not just you and I,” said Taiko triumphantly. “We’ve got a lot of help we didn’t have before. Would you like to see them?”

Taiko touched his joymaker, and the field of the view-screen widened. Forrester was looking into a fairly large room and a rather heavily populated one.

Taiko did indeed have a lot of help. There were perhaps a dozen of them, Forrester saw, but he did not count them very accurately. He was too shocked to count when he discovered that only one or two of the dozen “helpers” in the room were human.

The rest were not. They looked out at Forrester through eyes that were circlets of gleaming green dots. They were Sirians.

“You see, pal,” said Taiko easily, “it’s a matter of loyalties. Our friends here are kind of funny-looking, I admit. But they’re organic.”

Forrester goggled. The Sirians in their cone-shaped pressure suits looked exactly like his late friend and benefactor, S Four. The idea of making allies of them was hard to accept. Not only because they were potentially dangerous enemies, but because his own contact with S Four had left him with an unshakable conviction that men and Sirians were far from being able to communicate on any meaningful level.

Taiko laughed. “Takes you aback, eh? But it was obvious—only it took somebody like me to see how to make it work. These guys are geniuses on the electronic stuff, absolute geniuses. They’ve given us a chance to put the ideals of the Ned Lud Society into practice, once and for all. . . . Look, are you interested or not? Because I can send you back where you came from as easily as I brought you here.”

“I’m interested, all right,” said Forrester.

Taiko was sharp enough to catch a hint of double meaning. “Interested to work with us? Or to try to mess us up?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He chuckled. “Makes no difference in the long run,” he said merrily. “What can you do? Come on up and talk it over, anyway. . . .”

And there was a faint click, and the door of Forrester’s cell sprang open, and a line of pale glowing green arrowheads appeared to point the way for him to walk.

I wish, he thought, that Adne were here to talk to.

But Adne was deep in the liquid-helium sleep of death, with her children, with nearly everyone else Forrester had met in this century. There was no one to tell him what to do.

He followed the tick of the arrowheads appearing before him as precisely as though they were the measures of a dance. It could not possibly be right, he told himself, to change the ways of the world with the aid of creatures from another star. It violated every principle of equity and human rights.

On the other hand, what Taiko was after made sense. Was it right to submit the destinies of the world to a cluster of computers?

For that matter, thought Forrester, tardily realizing how little of his homework he had done, was the premise right in that statement? Were the computers masters of the world? Who did make fundamental decisions?

Was it possible that a state had been reached in which fundamental decisions made themselves—not by the acts of a legislature, but by the actions of sovereign individuals, viewed en masse?

He shook his head. It was rather pointless to be considering these large questions, in view of his circumstances. He was several hundred meters under the surface of a lake, he reminded himself, in a world that had rejected him several times and was now dissolving around him.

The arrowheads ended at a door, which wheeled itself open as he approached, and he entered the room he had seen in the view-screen.

“About time!” cried Taiko, advancing toward him and clapping him on the shoulder. “You know, Charles, you should have confided in me. If it hadn’t been for my friends here—” he gestured at the Sirians in their conical suits—“I’d never have known how much you had to do with our success. Haw! You said you’d help the society if I’d let you join. I just had no idea how much!”

“So you know how S Four tricked me,” said Forrester.

“Don’t be modest! It was a noble deed—even if he had to, well, lean on you a little to make you do it. I can only wonder,” Taiko went on modestly, “why I didn’t think of it myself. Obviously, the way to make Ned Lud ideals real is to get enough people so chicken-scared that they light out for the freezers, leaving the rest of the world to take care of whatever happens next. Only there isn’t enough rest of the world still alive to matter. And while things are messed up, we move.”

One of the Sirians moved restlessly. Its circlet of green eyes winked like gems, dimmed only faintly by the sheen of the crystal band that kept it from the corrosive attack of Earth’s air. It did not speak, but Taiko seemed to understand what it was thinking.

“They don’t exactly want you here,” he said, turning a thumb toward the Sirian. “Not that they’re not grateful. Well, whatever a Sirian would be that you might call grateful. But there’s a lot riding on all this for them, and they don’t like to take chances.”

“Do you want me to promise not to interfere?” asked Forrester wonderingly.

“No! Who’d believe you’d keep a promise like that? Anyway, it isn’t necessary. What could you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing! We’ve already recircuited most of Central Computation—no communication anywhere, anymore. Except for the coppers—which are under our direct control—and the DR vehicles. Which I insisted on,” he pointed out, “because naturally I’m not going to hurt any human beings if I can help it. Sweat! I want to save them!”

“What about your friends here?”

“Forget them, Charles,” said Taiko easily. “Don’t fret yourself, they’re just technical advisors. I’m the one that’s running this show, and when we finish busting up the machines they’re going home.”

“How do you know?” Forrester demanded.

“Oh, sweat, Charles,” sighed Taiko. He glanced ruefully at the Sirians, shook his head, took Forrester by the arm. He walked him over to a view-wall and pointed.

“The pictures are a little random and fuzzy,” he apologized, “because naturally Central Computing isn’t monitoring the intercuts any more. But look. You see what the world looks like now?”

Forrester looked. One wall showed a broad hoverway with a single car on it, lying slantwise across the way and motionless; no one was around. The other wall changed as he watched from blank gray to a growing fire that seemed to be consuming most of the central part of a city. It did not look like Shoggo.

“You think the Sirians are going to worry about Earth without Central Computing?” demanded Taiko. “Sweat, no! Once the machine computation facilities are neutralized, they’ll be glad to go home. Earth won’t be a threat. And they’re not naturally warlike.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, come on, Charles! You have to take some things on faith!”

Forrester said carefully, “Are you all that good a judge of Sirian character? Please, I’m not trying to put you down. I want to know. How can you be sure?”

“It stands to reason!” snapped Taiko. “Oh, I know, Charles, you’re thinking of the way I’ve been acting, like a clown, an idiot, pushing an idea that not one human being in a hundred thousand gave a hoot about, warning about dangers most people thought were delights. . . . But I’m not stupid. I moved in fast enough when you gave me the break, right? I showed I was smart enough to grab a chance when it presented itself? So trust me. I’m smart enough to see that there’s nothing in it for the Sirians as far as fighting Earth is concerned. Why would they want to do that? They can’t live here without suits. There are a thousand planets that would be worth something to them; Earth doesn’t happen to be one of them.”

There was a sound from the voice-box of one of the Sirians. Taiko jumped. He turned to call out, “All right, just a minute.” And, to Forrester, “Well, that’s it. I’m a sentimental slob. I’d like to have you with us since you did us a favor—whether you knew it or not. But it’s up to you. In or out?”

“I don’t know,” said Forrester honestly.

“Take your time,” grinned Taiko. “The jail’s yours. Just remember, there’s nothing you can do to hurt us. No communications. No transportation. And damn near nobody.”

Forrester walked back out into the bright, empty corridors of Shoggo’s underwater jail. No one stopped him.

There were no green arrows to guide him. As he had come from the left, he turned to the right. He wanted to think. Was Taiko right? Judging from his own experience, this was at least a disconcerting society, filled with unexpected cruelties and cowardices. But who was Taiko to make the world’s decisions for it?

He saw a bright light ahead and walked toward it. It was sunlight! Sunlight shining down a shaft, and a white death-reversal car humming quietly to itself as it waited.

There was an attendant, but though it looked human enough it glared into Forrester’s eyes and said challengingly, “Man Forrester! Your arrest has been ordered. Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

“Machine,” he said, “you’re a broken record.” Then he had a thought. “Take me out of here!” he commanded, climbing into the DR flier.

“Man Forrester! Your arrest has been ordered. Do you wish a precis of the charge against you?”

It was hopeless, of course. He hoped, anyway, and sat there for minutes, while the machine that looked so like a human being glared unmovingly at him and the DR car remained motionless. Then Forrester sighed, got out, walked away.

“I might as well join them,” he said aloud.

But he didn’t want to. He didn’t merely not want to; he actively, passionately wished he could thwart Taiko’s plan. As soon as it become clear he had only one choice to make, that choice became abhorrent.

But there was nothing he could do. He considered possibilities, one by one. Nothing would work. His joymaker was mute. There was no way out of the jail. Even the DR car would take him away only if he were dead, not alive. . . .

If he were dead?

He took a deep breath and marched back to the DR car. As he had thought, the side of it was emblazoned with the caduceus of the WEST ANNEX CENTER.

He demanded, “Machine, are you really operating out of the West Annex Center?”

The robot glared into his eyes. “Man Forrester! Your arrest has been ordered. Would you like a precis of the charge against you?”

“What I would like,” said Forrester tightly, “is an insurance policy. But I guess I’ll have to take a chance this one time without one. Let’s hope it’s only your speaking circuits that are messed up!”

What he wanted he knew he would find in the flier. He reached into it, fumbled through the nest of first-aid equipment.

The thing he wanted turned up in the first case he opened: a four-inch scalpel, razor sharp. He stared at it glumly, hesitated, searched again until he found a writing stylus and a square of cardboard. Carefully he lettered a sign:

REVIVE ME AT ONCE!

I can tell you what the Sirians are up to.

He pinned it neatly to his shirt front. Then . . .

“Machine!” he cried. “Do your duty!” And with a rapid motion he slit his throat.

The pain was astonishing, but it lasted for only a moment. And then the world roared thinly at him and slipped dizzyingly away.