We, Robots

Functional machines have been around for almost as long as humans have, but how on earth does one go about giving a machine ideas?

And say we made one: would the fact that such a machine thought make it alive?

Why shouldn’t thought, even consciousness itself, exist in dead things?

A great deal of ink is spilled on such questions, and we could save ourselves a lot of fuss if only we could bring ourselves to declare, along with Ambrose Bierce’s ill-fated Moxon in the 1899 short story that bears his name, «I do believe that a machine thinks about the work that it is doing.»

The idea that every thing thinks, in some measure and in some manner, is called panpsychism. This venerable notion (dating back to pre-Socratic times) saves us from countless circular arguments about the nature of life, soul, consciousness, mind, intelligence, spirit and so on. It places us in a sensible ethical relationship to the world around us. And it puts very many professors out of a job, which is why so many of them hate it with a passion.

Science fiction writers dally with panpsychism from time to time. My favourite in this collection is «Tomorrow Is Waiting» (2011) by Holli Mintzer, who also makes jewellery (Philip Dick, a famous panpsychist dabbler, would approve).

Some argue that Mind (spirit, soul, what-have-you) is a kind of juice. A spirit. An aether. An ectoplasm. You either have it or you don’t and no-one knows the location of the tap. The idea hasn’t much philosophical currency, but it clings on in science fiction, where it powers those tiresome scenes in which a clone/quantum double/android replica agonises over the discovery that it is a copy/echo/ «not really real». As though being really ourselves was ever anything more than a story we tell ourselves, every time we wake up!

We know it is like to really, genuinely, not feel like ourselves. We call it schizophrenia. But if I woke up in a robot body tomorrow, and felt like myself, then I would still be me, even if there were a hundred "me"s. And I frankly can’t see any reason why I and my doppelganger (should I ever have the good fortune to run into him) wouldn’t get on like a house on fire. The robots in Adam Roberts’s story "Adam Robots" would surely agree with me.

The other way of explaining mind is to say that it emerges. That’s it: the totality of the explanation. We dress it up of course, in all manner of medieval garb (as in: mind is an emergent property; as in, mind arises out of complexity). But this idea of emergence is even worse than panpsychism because it presupposes a completely arbitrary moment at which a non-conscious being miraculously becomes conscious.

Science fiction sticks lipstick on this pig, too, mostly by equating real, human consciousness with the capacity to feel emotion. Enter Brent Spiner’s Lieutenant Commander Data, surely the biggest waste of an actor ever perpetrated by Star Trek: The Next Generation (and that’s saying something). Behind Data’s emotionless android efficiency lies the very 1980s assumption that emotion arrives rather late in the evolutionary process, as a sort of special sauce, spicing up the cold hard business of existence. We can replicate much of life, runs the argument, but the final ingredient, emotion, remains tantalisingly just out of our grasp.

One can only assume that the writers who perpetuated this dumb idea never owned dogs. Dogs, I hope we can all agree, have minds rather simpler than our own. Well. these minds contain nothing but emotion. Dogs are rubbish at trigonometry, but they are Zen masters of grief, loyalty, rage, and disappointment.

Emotions come first – cognitive categories through which our physiological responses can be emulated, predicted and controlled. Cold reason comes after – and if you disconnect logic from its emotional foundations, well, good luck to you (and don’t even get me started on Mr Spock).

Emotion runs very near the surface of many good robot stories, but rather than commend some sweet tales (you can find them for yourselves) I’m inclined to point interested readers towards Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s "I Made You" (1954) which features one of the few genuinely terrifying robots in the literature. This coldly functional creature, with its narrow, simplistic grasp on the world, inevitably behaves like, thinks like – hell, becomes – a whipped dog, frothing with rage. Making a similar point, but in the service of pathos rather than terror, comes Mike Resnick’s "Beachcomber" – another personal favourite.

Peter Watts hardly had to invent the tortured robot protagonist of his Conradian war story "Malak" (2010). Rather, he reveals his skill in the way he conjures up a working mind out of the logical protocols of contemporary war machines. Is Watts right about the cadet minds we are even now sending on sorties over the earth’s most intractable conflicts? I hope not. And I am comforted by the thought that no thinking being we know of actually thinks in isolation. All the brightest creatures on our planet are social creatures, and individuals separated from those societies don’t amount to much. A single mad mind is unlikely to cause us much trouble.

Honest.

THE GOLEM RUNS AMUCK Chayim Bloch

As mentioned before, Rabbi Loew made it a custom, every Friday afternoon, to assign for the Golem a sort of programme, a plan for the day’s work, for on the Sabbath he spoke to him only in extremely urgent cases. Generally, Rabbi Loew used to order him to do nothing else on Sabbath but be on guard and serve as a watcher.

One Friday afternoon, Rabbi Loew forgot to give him the order for the next day, and the Golem had nothing to do.

The day had barely drawn to a close and the people were getting ready for the ushering in of the Sabbath, when the Golem, like one mad, began running about in the Jewish section of the city, threatening to destroy everything. The want of employment made him awkward and wild. When the people saw this, they ran from him and cried: "Joseph Golem has gone mad!"

The people were greatly terrified, and a report of the panic soon reached the Altneu Synagogue where Rabbi Loew was praying.

The Sabbath had already been ushered in through the Song for the Sabbath day (Psalms xcii). What could be done? Rabbi Loew reflected on the evil consequences that might follow if the Golem should be running about thus uncontrolled. But to restore him to peace would be a profanation of the Sabbath.

In his confusion, he forgot that it was a question of danger to human life and that in such cases the law permits, nay, commands the profanation of the Sabbath in order that the people exposed to danger might be saved.

Rabbi Loew rushed out and, without seeing the Golem, called out into space: "Joseph, stop where you are!"

And the people saw the Golem at the place where he happened to find himself that moment, remain standing, like a post. In a single instant, he had overcome the violence of his fury.

Rabbi Loew was soon informed where the Golem stood, and he betook himself to him. He whispered into his ear: "Go home and to bed." And the Golem obeyed him as willingly as a child.

Then Rabbi Loew went back to the House of Prayer and ordered that the Sabbath Song be repeated.

After that Friday, Rabbi Loew never again forgot to give the Golem orders for the Sabbath on a Friday afternoon.

To his confidential friends he said: "The Golem could have laid waste all Prague, if I had not calmed him down in time."

FANDOM FOR ROBOTS Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record (). After all, Computron does not have any emotion circuits installed, and is thus constitutionally incapable of experiencing "excitement," "hatred," or "frustration." It is completely impossible for Computron to experience emotions such as "excitement about the seventh episode of HyperWarp," "hatred of the anime’s short episode length" or "frustration that Friday is so far away."

Computron checks his internal chronometer, as well as the countdown page on the streaming website. There are twenty-two hours, five minutes, forty-six seconds, and twelve milliseconds until 2 am on Friday (Japanese Standard Time). Logically, he is aware that time is most likely passing at a normal rate. The Simak Robotics Museum is not within close proximity of a black hole, and there is close to no possibility that time is being dilated. His constant checking of the chronometer to compare it with the countdown page serves no scientific purpose whatsoever.

After fifty milliseconds, Computron checks the countdown page again.

The Simak Robotics Museum’s commemorative postcard set ($15.00 for a set of twelve) describes Computron as "The only known sentient robot, created in 1954 by Doctor Karel Alquist to serve as a laboratory assistant. No known scientist has managed to recreate the doctor’s invention. Its steel-framed box-and-claw design is characteristic of the period." Below that, in smaller print, the postcard thanks the Alquist estate for their generous donation.

In the museum, Computron is regarded as a quaint artefact, and plays a key role in the Robotics Then and Now performance as an example of the "Then." After the announcer’s introduction to robotics, Computron appears on stage, answers four standard queries from the audience as proof of his sentience, and steps off the stage to make way for the rest of the performance, which ends with the android-bodied automaton TETSUCHAN showcasing its ability to breakdance.

Today’s queries are likely to be similar to the rest. A teenage girl waves at the announcer and receives the microphone.

"Hi, Computron. My question is… have you watched anime before?"

[Yes,] Computron vocalises. [I have viewed the works of the renowned actress Anna May Wong. Doctor Alquist enjoyed her movies as a child.]

"Oh, um, not that," the girl continues. "I meant Japanese animation. Have you ever watched this show called Hyperdimension Warp Record?"

[I have not.]

"Oh, okay, I was just thinking that you really looked like one of the characters. But since you haven’t, maybe you could give HyperWarp a shot! It’s really good, you might like it! There are six episodes out so far, and you can watch it on—"

The announcer cuts the girl off, and hands the microphone over to the next querent, who has a question about Doctor Alquist’s research. After answering two more standard queries, Computron returns to his storage room to answer his electronic mail, which consists of queries from elementary school students. He picks up two metal styluses, one in each of his grasping claws, and begins tapping them on the computing unit’s keyboard, one key at a time. Computron explains the difference between a robot and an android to four students, and provides the fifth student with a hyperlink to Daniel Clement Dennett III’s writings on consciousness.

As Computron readies himself to enter sleep mode, he recalls the teenage girl’s request that he "give HyperWarp a shot." It is only logical to research the Japanese animation Hyperdimension Warp Record in order to address queries from future visitors. The title, when entered into a search engine on the World Wide Web, produces about 957,000 results (0.27 seconds).

Computron manoeuvres the mouse pointer to the third hyperlink, which offers to let him "watch Hyperdimension Warp Record FULL episodes streaming online high quality." From the still image behind the prominent "play" button, the grey boxy figure standing beside the large-eyed blue-haired human does bear an extremely slight resemblance to Computron’s design. It is only logical to press the "play" button on the first episode, in order to familiarise himself with recent discourse about robots in popular culture.

The series’ six episodes are each approximately 25 minutes long. Between watching the series, viewing the online bulletin boards, and perusing the extensively footnoted fan encyclopedia, Computron does not enter sleep mode for ten hours, thirty-six minutes, two seconds, and twenty milliseconds.

Hyperdimension Warp Record ( Chōjigen Wāpu Rekōdo, literal translation: Super Dimensional Warp Record) is a Japanese anime series set in space in the far future. The protagonist, Ellison, is an escapee from a supposedly inescapable galactic prison. Joined by a fellow escapee, Cyro (short for Cybernetic Robot), the two make their way across the galaxy to seek revenge. The targets of their revenge are the Seven Sabers of Paradise, who have stolen the hyperdimensional warp unit from Cyro’s creator and caused the death of Ellison’s entire family.

Episode seven of HyperWarp comes with the revelation that the Second Saber, Ellison’s identical twin, had murdered their parents before faking her own death. After Cyro and Ellison return to the Kosmogram, the last segment of the episode unfolds without dialogue. There is a slow pan across the spaceship’s control area, revealing that Ellison has indulged in the human pastime known as "crying" before falling asleep in the captain’s chair. His chest binder is stained with blood from the wound on his collarbone. Cyro reaches over, gently using his grabbing claw to loosen Ellison’s binder, and drapes a blanket over him. An instrumental version of the end theme plays as Cyro gets up from his seat, making his way to the recharging bay at the back of the ship. From the way his footfalls are animated, it is clear that Cyro is trying his best to avoid making any noise as he walks.

The credits play over a zoomed-out shot of the Kosmogram making its way to the next exoplanet, a tiny pinpoint of bright blue in the vast blackness of space.

The preview for the next episode seems to indicate that the episode will focus on the Sabers’ initial attempt to activate the hyperdimensional warp unit. There is no mention of Cyro or Ellison at all.

During the wait for episode eight, Computron discovers a concept called "fanfiction."

While "fanfiction" is meant to consist of "fan-written stories about characters or settings from an original work of fiction," Computron observes that much of the HyperWarp fanfiction bears no resemblance to the actual characters or setting. For instance, the series that claims to be a "spin-off focusing on Powerful!Cyro" seems to involve Cyro installing many large-calibre guns onto his frame and joining the Space Marines, which does not seem relevant to his quest for revenge or the retrieval of the hyperdimensional warp unit. Similarly, the "high school fic" in which Cyro and Ellison study at Hyperdimension High fails to acknowledge the fact that formal education is reserved for the elite class in the HyperWarp universe.

Most of the fanfiction set within the actual series seems particularly inaccurate. The most recent offender is EllisonsWife’s "Rosemary for Remembrance," which fails to acknowledge the fact that Cyro does not have human facial features, and thus cannot "touch his nose against Ellison’s hair, breathing in the scent of sandalwood, rosemary, and something uniquely him" before "kissing Ellison passionately, needily, hungrily, his tongue slipping into Ellison’s mouth."

Computron readies his styluses and moves the cursor down to the comment box, prepared to leave anonymous "constructive criticism" for EllisonsWife, when he detects a comment with relevant keywords.

Computron is incapable of feeling hatred for anything, as that would require Doctor Alquist to have installed emotion circuits during his creation.

However, due to Computron’s above-average procedural knowledge, he is capable of following the directions to create an account on fanficarchive.org.

…and Ellison manoeuvred his flesh hands in a claw-like motion, locking them with Cyro’s own grasping claws. His soft human body pressed against the hard lines of Cyro’s proprietary alloy, in a manner which would have generated wear and tear had Cyro’s body not been of superior make. Fluids leaked from Ellison’s eyes. No fluids leaked from Cyro’s ocular units, but…

Computron has been spending less time in sleep mode after episode thirteen’s cliffhanger, and has spent his time conducting objective discussions about HyperWarp’s appeal with commenters on various video streaming sites and anonymous message boards.

As he is about to reply to the latest missive about his lack of genitalia and outside social activities, which is technically correct, his internal chronometer indicates that it is time for the Robotics Then and Now performance.

"So, I was wondering, have you ever watched Hyperdimension Warp Record? There’s this character called Cyro that—"

[Yes, I am aware of HyperWarp,] Computron says. [I have taken the "How To Tell If Your Life Is HyperWarp" quiz online, and it has indicated that I am "a Hyper-Big HyperWarp Fan!" I have repeatedly viewed the scene between Ellison and Cyro at the end of episode seven, and recently I have left a "like" on bjornruffian’s artwork of what may have happened shortly after that scene, due to its exceptional accuracy. The show is widely regarded as "this season’s sleeper hit" and has met with approval from a statistically significant number of critics. If other members of the audience wish to view this series, there are thirteen episodes out so far, and they can be viewed on—] The announcer motions to him, using the same gesture she uses when audience members are taking too long to talk. Computron falls silent until the announcer chooses the next question, which is also the last due to time constraints.

After TETSUCHAN has finished its breakdance and showcased its newly programmed ability to pop-and-lock, the announcer speaks to Computron backstage. She requests that he take less time for the question-and-answer segment in the future.

[Understood,] Computron says, and returns to his storage room to check his inbox again.

Shortly after reading bjornruffian’s message, Computron visits the Early Robotics section of the museum. It has shrunk significantly over the years, particularly after the creation of the "Redefining Human," "Androids of the Future," and "Drone Zone" sections. It consists of several information panels, a small collection of tin toys, and the remnants of all three versions of Hexode the robot.

In episode fourteen of Hyperdimension Warp Record, Cyro visits a deserted exoplanet alone to investigate the history of the hyperdimension warp drive, and finds himself surrounded by the deactivated bodies of robots of similar make, claws outstretched, being slowly ground down by the gears of a gigantic machine. The "Robot Recycler" scene is frequently listed as one of that year’s top ten most shocking moments in anime.

On 7 June 1957, the third version of Hexode fails Doctor Alquist’s mirror test for the hundredth time, proving that it has no measurable self-awareness. Computron watches Doctor Alquist smash the spanner against Hexode’s face, crumpling its nose and lips. Oil leaks from its ocular units as it falls to the floor with a metallic thud. Its vocal synthesiser crackles and hisses.

"You godforsaken tin bucket," Doctor Alquist shouts. "To hell with you." If Doctor Alquist were to raise the spanner to Computron, it is likely that Doctor Alquist will not have an assistant for any future robotics experiments. Computron stays still, standing in front of the mirror, silently observing the destruction of Hexode so he can gather up its parts later.

When Computron photographs Hexode’s display case, he is careful to avoid capturing any part of himself in the reflection.

There are certain things in the museum’s storage room that would benefit bjornruffian’s mission of completing her Cyro/Ellison comic. Computron and Hexode’s schematics are part of the Alquist Collection, which is not a priority for the museum’s digitisation project due to a perceived lack of value. As part of the Alquist Collection himself, there should be no objection to Computron retrieving the schematics.

As Computron grasps the doorknob with his left claw, he catches a glimpse of Cyro from episode fifteen in the door’s glass panels, his ocular units blazing yellow with determination after overcoming his past. In fan parlance, this is known as Determined!Cyro, and has only been seen during fight scenes thus far. It is illogical to have Determined!Cyro appear in this context, or in this location.

Computron looks at the dusty glass again, and sees only a reflection of his face.

Rossum, Sulla. "Tin Men and Tin Toys: Examining Real and Fictional Robots from the 1950s." Journal of Robotics Studies 8.2 (2018): 25–38.

While the figure of the fictional robot embodies timeless fears of technology and its potential for harm, the physical design of robots real and fictional is often linked to visual cues of modernity. What was once regarded as an "object of the future" can become "overwhelmingly obsolete" within a span of a few years, after advances in technology cause the visual cues of modernity to change (Bloch, 1979). The clawed, lumbering tin-toy-esque designs of the 1950s are now widely regarded as "tin can[s] that should have been recycled long ago" (Williamson, 2017). Notably, most modern critiques of Computron’s design tend to focus on its obsolete analogue dials…

watch-free-anime | Hyperdimension Warp Record | Episode 23 | Live Chat

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MOXON’S MASTER Ambrose Bierce

"Are you serious?—do you really believe that a machine thinks?"

I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that he had "something on his mind."

Presently he said:

"What is a ‘machine’? The word has been variously defined. Here is one definition from a popular dictionary: ‘Any instrument or organization by which power is applied and made effective, or a desired effect produced.’ Well, then, is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks—or thinks he thinks."

"If you do not wish to answer my question," I said, rather testily, "why not say so?—all that you say is mere evasion. You know well enough that when I say ‘machine’ I do not mean a man, but something that man has made and controls."

"When it does not control him," he said, rising abruptly and looking out of a window, whence nothing was visible in the blackness of a stormy night. A moment later he turned about and with a smile said: "I beg your pardon; I had no thought of evasion. I considered the dictionary man’s unconscious testimony suggestive and worth something in the discussion. I can give your question a direct answer easily enough: I do believe that a machine thinks about the work that it is doing."

That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether pleasing, for it tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon’s devotion to study and work in his machine-shop had not been good for him. I knew, for one thing, that he suffered from insomnia, and that is no light affliction. Had it affected his mind? His reply to my question seemed to me then evidence that it had; perhaps I should think differently about it now. I was younger then, and among the blessings that are not denied to youth is ignorance. Incited by that great stimulant to controversy, I said:

"And what, pray, does it think with—in the absence of a brain?"

The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took his favorite form of counter-interrogation:

"With what does a plant think—in the absence of a brain?"

"Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should be pleased to know some of their conclusions; you may omit the premises."

"Perhaps," he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish irony, "you may be able to infer their convictions from their acts. I will spare you the familiar examples of the sensitive mimosa, the several insectivorous flowers and those whose stamens bend down and shake their pollen upon the entering bee in order that he may fertilize their distant mates. But observe this. In an open spot in my garden I planted a climbing vine. When it was barely above the surface I set a stake into the soil a yard away. The vine at once made for it, but as it was about to reach it after several days I removed it a few feet. The vine at once altered its course, making an acute angle, and again made for the stake. This manoeuvre was repeated several times, but finally, as if discouraged, the vine abandoned the pursuit and ignoring further attempts to divert it traveled to a small tree, further away, which it climbed.

"Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly in search of moisture. A well-known horticulturist relates that one entered an old drain pipe and followed it until it came to a break, where a section of the pipe had been removed to make way for a stone wall that had been built across its course. The root left the drain and followed the wall until it found an opening where a stone had fallen out. It crept through and following the other side of the wall back to the drain, entered the unexplored part and resumed its journey."

"And all this?"

"Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the consciousness of plants. It proves that they think."

"Even if it did—what then? We were speaking, not of plants, but of machines. They may be composed partly of wood—wood that has no longer vitality—or wholly of metal. Is thought an attribute also of the mineral kingdom?"

"How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of crystallization?"

"I do not explain them."

"Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to deny, namely, intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the crystals. When soldiers form lines, or hollow squares, you call it reason. When wild geese in flight take the form of a letter V you say instinct. When the homogeneous atoms of a mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange themselves into shapes mathematically perfect, or particles of frozen moisture into the symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have nothing to say. You have not even invented a name to conceal your heroic unreason."

Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness. As he paused I heard in an adjoining room known to me as his "machine-shop," which no one but himself was permitted to enter, a singular thumping sound, as of some one pounding upon a table with an open hand. Moxon heard it at the same moment and, visibly agitated, rose and hurriedly passed into the room whence it came. I thought it odd that any one else should be in there, and my interest in my friend—with doubtless a touch of unwarrantable curiosity—led me to listen intently, though, I am happy to say, not at the keyhole. There were confused sounds, as of a struggle or scuffle; the floor shook. I distinctly heard hard breathing and a hoarse whisper which said "Damn you!" Then all was silent, and presently Moxon reappeared and said, with a rather sorry smile:

"Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there that lost its temper and cut up rough."

Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by four parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:

"How would it do to trim its nails?"

I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if nothing had occurred:

"Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man of your reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. I do. There is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose—more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of its work.

"Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer’s definition of ‘Life’? I read it thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward, for anything I know, but in all that time I have been unable to think of a single word that could profitably be changed or added or removed. It seems to me not only the best definition, but the only possible one.

"‘Life,’ he says, ‘is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.’"

"That defines the phenomenon," I said, "but gives no hint of its cause."

"That," he replied, "is all that any definition can do. As Mill points out, we know nothing of cause except as an antecedent—nothing of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without another, which is dissimilar: the first in point of time we call cause, the second, effect. One who had many times seen a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs otherwise, would think the rabbit the cause of the dog.

"But I fear," he added, laughing naturally enough, "that my rabbit is leading me a long way from the track of my legitimate quarry: I’m indulging in the pleasure of the chase for its own sake. What I want you to observe is that in Herbert Spencer’s definition of ‘life’ the activity of a machine is included—there is nothing in the definition that is not applicable to it. According to this sharpest of observers and deepest of thinkers, if a man during his period of activity is alive, so is a machine when in operation. As an inventor and constructor of machines I know that to be true."

Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the fire. It was growing late and I thought it time to be going, but somehow I did not like the notion of leaving him in that isolated house, all alone except for the presence of some person of whose nature my conjectures could go no further than that it was unfriendly, perhaps malign. Leaning toward him and looking earnestly into his eyes while making a motion with my hand through the door of his workshop, I said:

"Moxon, whom have you in there?"

Somewhat to my surprise he laughed lightly and answered without hesitation:

"Nobody; the incident that you have in mind was caused by my folly in leaving a machine in action with nothing to act upon, while I undertook the interminable task of enlightening your understanding. Do you happen to know that Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm?"

"O bother them both!" I replied, rising and laying hold of my overcoat. "I’m going to wish you good night; and I’ll add the hope that the machine which you inadvertently left in action will have her gloves on the next time you think it needful to stop her."

Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot I left the house.

Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond the crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along precarious plank sidewalks and across miry, unpaved streets I could see the faint glow of the city’s lights, but behind me nothing was visible but a single window of Moxon’s house. It glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and fateful meaning. I knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend’s "machine-shop," and I had little doubt that he had resumed the studies interrupted by his duties as my instructor in mechanical consciousness and the fatherhood of Rhythm. Odd, and in some degree humorous, as his convictions seemed to me at that time, I could not wholly divest myself of the feeling that they had some tragic relation to his life and character—perhaps to his destiny—although I no longer entertained the notion that they were the vagaries of a disordered mind. Whatever might be thought of his views, his exposition of them was too logical for that. Over and over, his last words came back to me: "Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm." Bald and terse as the statement was, I now found it infinitely alluring. At each recurrence it broadened in meaning and deepened in suggestion. Why, here, (I thought) is something upon which to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm all things ARE conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is rhythmic. I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth of his thought—the scope of this momentous generalization; or had he arrived at his philosophic faith by the tortuous and uncertain road of observation?

That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon’s expounding had failed to make me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great light shone about me, like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus; and out there in the storm and darkness and solitude I experienced what Lewes calls "The endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought." I exulted in a new sense of knowledge, a new pride of reason. My feet seemed hardly to touch the earth; it was as if I were uplifted and borne through the air by invisible wings.

Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about, and almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon’s door. I was drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort. Unable in my excitement to find the doorbell I instinctively tried the knob. It turned and, entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so recently left. All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I had supposed, was in the adjoining room—the "machine-shop." Groping along the wall until I found the communicating door I knocked loudly several times, but got no response, which I attributed to the uproar outside, for the wind was blowing a gale and dashing the rain against the thin walls in sheets. The drumming upon the shingle roof spanning the unceiled room was loud and incessant.

I had never been invited into the machine-shop—had, indeed, been denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled metal worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and his habit silence. But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door. What I saw took all philosophical speculation out of me in short order.

Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a single candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him, his back toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two was a chessboard; the men were playing. I knew little of chess, but as only a few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game was near its close. Moxon was intensely interested—not so much, it seemed to me, in the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed so intent a look that, standing though I did directly in the line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved. His face was ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. Of his antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient; I should not have cared to see his face.

He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions suggesting those of a gorilla—a tremendous breadth of shoulders, thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth of black hair and was topped with a crimson fez. A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat—apparently a box—upon which he sat; his legs and feet were not seen. His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with his right hand, which seemed disproportionately long.

I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his opponent he could have observed nothing now, except that the door was open. Something forbade me either to enter or to retire, a feeling—I know not how it came—that I was in the presence of an imminent tragedy and might serve my friend by remaining. With a scarcely conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act I remained.

The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most convenient to his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous and lacking in precision. The response of his antagonist, while equally prompt in the inception, was made with a slow, uniform, mechanical and, I thought, somewhat theatrical movement of the arm, that was a sore trial to my patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I caught myself shuddering. But I was wet and cold.

Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And then that he was a machine—an automaton chess-player! Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of this device—only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical action upon me in my ignorance of its secret?

A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transports—my "endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought!" I was about to retire in disgust when something occurred to hold my curiosity. I observed a shrug of the thing’s great shoulders, as if it were irritated: and so natural was this—so entirely human—that in my new view of the matter it startled me. Nor was that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply with its clenched hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I: he pushed his chair a little backward, as in alarm.

Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the board, pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrow-hawk and with the exclamation "checkmate!" rose quickly to his feet and stepped behind his chair. The automaton sat motionless.

The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped the repressive and regulating action of some controlling part—an effect such as might be expected if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and head it shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and with a movement almost too quick for the eye to follow shot forward across table and chair, with both arms thrust forth to their full length—the posture and lunge of a diver. Moxon tried to throw himself backward out of reach, but he was too late: I saw the horrible thing’s hands close upon his throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was black dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man’s efforts to breathe. Guided by the infernal hubbub, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Moxon underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—upon the painted face of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness and silence.

Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain I recognized in my attendant Moxon’s confidential workman, Haley. Responding to a look he approached, smiling.

"Tell me about it," I managed to say, faintly—"all about it."

"Certainly," he said; "you were carried unconscious from a burning house—Moxon’s. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have to do a little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit mysterious, too. My own notion is that the house was struck by lightning."

"And Moxon?"

"Buried yesterday—what was left of him."

Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable enough. After some moments of the keenest mental suffering I ventured to ask another question:

"Who rescued me?"

"Well, if that interests you—I did."

"Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue, also, that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess-player that murdered its inventor?"

The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he turned and gravely said:

"Do you know that?"

"I do," I replied; "I saw it done."

That was many years ago. If asked to-day I should answer less confidently.

THE LAND IRONCLADS H. G. Wells

The young lieutenant lay beside the war correspondent and admired the idyllic calm of the enemy’s lines through his field-glass.

"So far as I can see," he said, at last, "one man."

"What’s he doing?" asked the war correspondent.

"Field-glass at us," said the young lieutenant.

"And this is war!"

"No," said the young lieutenant; "it’s Bloch."

"The game’s a draw."

"No! They’ve got to win or else they lose. A draw’s a win for our side."

They had discussed the political situation fifty times or so, and the war correspondent was weary of it. He stretched out his limbs. "Aaai s’pose it is!" he yawned.

"Flut!"

"What was that?"

"Shot at us."

The war correspondent shifted to a slightly lower position. "No one shot at him," he complained.

"I wonder if they think we shall get so bored we shall go home?"

The war correspondent made no reply.

"There’s the harvest, of course…"

They had been there a month. Since the first brisk movements after the declaration of war things had gone slower and slower, until it seemed as though the whole machine of events must have run down. To begin with, they had had almost a scampering time; the invader had come across the frontier on the very dawn of the war in half-a-dozen parallel columns behind a cloud of cyclists and cavalry, with a general air of coming straight on the capital, and the defender horsemen had held him up, and peppered him and forced him to open out to outflank, and had then bolted to the next position in the most approved style, for a couple of days, until in the afternoon, bump! they had the invader against their prepared lines of defense. He did not suffer so much as had been hoped and expected: he was coming on, it seemed with his eyes open, his scouts winded the guns, and down he sat at once without the shadow of an attack and began grubbing trenches for himself, as though he meant to sit down there to the very end of time. He was slow, but much more wary than the world had been led to expect, and he kept convoys tucked in and shielded his slow marching infantry sufficiently well to prevent any heavy adverse scoring.

"But he ought to attack," the young lieutenant had insisted.

"He’ll attack us at dawn, somewhere along the lines. You’ll get the bayonets coming into the trenches just about when you can see," the war correspondent had held until a week ago.

The young lieutenant winked when he said that.

When one early morning the men the defenders sent to lie out five hundred yards before the trenches, with a view to the unexpected emptying of magazines into any night attack, gave way to causeless panic and blazed away at nothing for ten minutes, the war correspondent understood the meaning of that wink.

"What would you do if you were the enemy?" said the war correspondent, suddenly.

"If I had men like I’ve got now?"

"Yes."

"Take those trenches."

"How?"

"Oh—dodges! Crawl out half-way at night before moonrise and get into touch with the chaps we send out. Blaze at ’em if they tried to shift, and so bag some of ’em in the daylight. Learn that patch of ground by heart, lie all day in squatty holes, and come on nearer next night. There’s a bit over there, lumpy ground, where they could get across to rushing distance—easy. In a night or so. It would be a mere game for our fellows; it’s what they’re made for… Guns? Shrapnel and stuff wouldn’t stop good men who meant business."

"Why don’t they do that?"

"Their men aren’t brutes enough: that’s the trouble. They’re a crowd of devitalized townsmen, and that’s the truth of the matter’ They’re clerks, they’re factory hands, they’re students, they’re civilized men. They can write, they can talk, they can make and do all sorts of things, but they’re poor amateurs at war. They’ve got no physical staying power, and that’s the whole thing. They’ve never slept in the open one night in their lives; they’ve never drunk anything but the purest water-company water; they’ve never gone short of three meals a day since they left their feeding-bottles. Half their cavalry never cocked leg over horse till it enlisted six months ago. They ride their horses as though they were bicycles—you watch ’em! They’re fools at the game, and they know it. Our boys of fourteen can give their grown men points… Very well——"

The war correspondent mused on his face with his nose between his knuckles.

"If a decent civilization," he said, "cannot produce better men for war than——"

He stopped with belated politeness.

"I mean——"

"Than our open-air life," said the young lieutenant, politely.

"Exactly," said the war correspondent. "Then civilization has to stop."

"It looks like it," the young lieutenant admitted.

"Civilization has science, you know," said the war correspondent. "It invented and it makes the rifles and guns and things you use."

"Which our nice healthy hunters and stockmen and so on, rowdy-dowdy cowpunchers and negro-whackers, can use ten times better than——What’s that?"

"What?" said the war correspondent, and then seeing his companion busy with his field-glass he produced his own: "Where?" said the war correspondent, sweeping the enemy’s lines.

"It’s nothing," said the young lieutenant, still looking.

"What’s nothing?"

The young lieutenant put down his glass and pointed. "I thought I saw something there, behind the stems of those trees. Something black. What it was I don’t know."

The war correspondent tried to get even by intense scrutiny.

"It wasn’t anything," said the young lieutenant, rolling over to regard the darkling evening sky, and generalized: "There never will be anything any more for ever. Unless——"

The war correspondent looked inquiringly.

"They may get their stomachs wrong, or something—living without proper drains."

A sound of bugles came from the tents behind. The war correspondent slid backward down the sand and stood up. "Boom!" came from somewhere far away to the left. "Halloa!" he said, hesitated, and crawled back to peer again. "Firing at this time is jolly bad manners."

The young lieutenant was incommunicative again for a space.

Then he pointed to the distant clump of trees again. "One of our big guns. They were firing at that," he said.

"The thing that wasn’t anything?"

"Something over there, anyhow."

Both men were silent, peering through their glasses for a space. "Just when it’s twilight," the lieutenant complained. He stood up.

"I might stay here a bit," said the war correspondent.

The lieutenant shook his head. "There is nothing to see," he apologized, and then went down to where his little squad of sun-brown, loose-limbed men had been yarning in the trench. The war correspondent stood up also, glanced for a moment at the business-like bustle below him, gave perhaps twenty seconds to those enigmatical trees again, then turned his face toward the camp.

He found himself wondering whether his editor would consider the story of how somebody thought he saw something black behind a clump of trees, and how a gun was fired at this illusion by somebody else, too trivial for public consultation.

"It’s the only gleam of a shadow of interest," said the war correspondent, "for ten whole days."

"No," he said, presently; "I’ll write that other article, ‘Is War Played Out?’"

He surveyed the darkling lines in perspective, the tangle of trenches one behind another, one commanding another, which the defender had made ready. The shadows and mists swallowed up their receding contours, and here and there a lantern gleamed, and here and there knots of men were busy about small fires.

"No troops on earth could do it," he said…

He was depressed. He believed that there were other things in life better worth having than proficiency in war; he believed that in the heart of civilization, for all its stresses, its crushing concentrations of forces, its injustice and suffering, there lay something that might be the hope of the world, and the idea that any people by living in the open air, hunting perpetually, losing touch with books and art and all the things that intensify life, might hope to resist and break that great development to the end of time, jarred on his civilized soul.

Apt to his thought came a file of defender soldiers and passed him in the gleam of a swinging lamp that marked the way.

He glanced at their red-lit faces, and one shone out for a moment, a common type of face in the defender’s ranks: ill-shaped nose, sensuous lips, bright clear eyes full of alert cunning, slouch hat cocked on one side and adorned with the peacock’s plume of the rustic Don Juan turned soldier, a hard brown skin, a sinewy frame, an open, tireless stride, and a master’s grip on the rifle.

The war correspondent returned their salutations and went on his way.

"Louts," he whispered. "Cunning, elementary louts. And they are going to beat the townsmen at the game of war!"

From the red glow among the nearer tents came first one and then half-a-dozen hearty voices, bawling in a drawling unison the words of a particularly sad and sentimental patriotic song.

"Oh, go it!" muttered the war correspondent, bitterly.

It was opposite the trenches called after Hackbone’s Hut that the battle began. There the ground stretched broad and level between the lines, with scarcely shelter for a lizard, and it seemed to the startled, just awakened men who came crowding into the trenches that this was one more proof of that green inexperience of the enemy of which they had heard so much. The war correspondent would not believe his ears at first, and swore that he and the war artist, who, still imperfectly roused, was trying to put on his boots by the light of a match held in his hand, were the victims of a common illusion. Then, after putting his head in a bucket of cold water, his intelligence came back as he towelled. He listened. "Gollys!" he said, "that’s something more than scare firing this time. It’s like ten thousand carts on a bridge of tin."

There came a sort of enrichment to that steady uproar. "Machine-guns!"

Then, "Guns!"

The artist, with one boot on, thought to look at his watch, and went to it hopping.

"Half an hour from dawn," he said. "You were right about their attacking, after all…"

The war correspondent came out of the tent, verifying the presence of chocolate in his pocket as he did so. He had to halt for a moment or so until his eyes were toned down to the night a little. "Pitch!" he said. He stood for a space to season his eyes before he felt justified in striking out for a black gap among the adjacent tents. The artist coming out behind him fell over a tent-rope. It was half-past two o’clock in the morning of the darkest night in time, and against a sky of dull black silk the enemy was talking searchlights, a wild jabber of searchlights. "He’s trying to blind our riflemen," said the war correspondent with a flash, and waited for the artist and then set off with a sort of discreet haste again. "Whoa!" he said, presently. "Ditches!"

They stopped.

"It’s the confounded searchlights," said the war correspondent.

They saw lanterns going to and fro, near by, and men falling in to march down to the trenches. They were for following them, and then the artist began to feel his night eyes. "If we scramble this," he said, "and it’s only a drain, there’s a clear run up to the ridge." And that way they took. Lights came and went in the tents behind, as the men turned out, and ever and again they came to broken ground and staggered and stumbled. But in a little while they drew near the crest. Something that sounded like the impact of a very important railway accident happened in the air above them, and the shrapnel bullets seethed about them like a sudden handful of hail. "Right-ho!" said the war correspondent, and soon they judged they had come to the crest and stood in the midst of a world of great darkness and frantic glares, whose principal fact was sound.

Right and left of them and all about them was the uproar, an army-full of magazine fire, at first chaotic and monstrous and then, eked out by little flashes and gleams and suggestions, taking the beginnings of a shape. It looked to the war correspondent as though the enemy must have attacked in line and with his whole force—in which case he was either being or was already annihilated.

"Dawn and the dead," he said, with his instinct for headlines. He said this to himself, but afterwards, by means of shouting, he conveyed an idea to the artist.

"They must have meant it for a surprise," he said.

It was remarkable how the firing kept on. After a time he began to perceive a sort of rhythm in this inferno of noise. It would decline—decline perceptibly, droop towards something that was comparatively a pause—a pause of inquiry. "Aren’t you all dead yet?" this pause seemed to say. The flickering fringe of rifle-flashes would become attenuated and broken, and the whack-bang of the enemy’s big guns two miles away there would come up out of the deeps. Then suddenly, east or west of them, something would startle the rifles to a frantic outbreak again.

The war correspondent taxed his brain for some theory of conflict that would account for this, and was suddenly aware that the artist and he were vividly illuminated. He could see the ridge on which they stood and before them in black outline a file of riflemen hurrying down towards the nearer trenches. It became visible that a light rain was falling, and farther away towards the enemy was a clear space with men—"our men?"—running across it in disorder. He saw one of those men throw up his hands and drop. And something else black and shining loomed up on the edge of the beam-coruscating flashes; and behind it and far away a calm, white eye regarded the world. "Whit, whit, whit," sang something in the air, and then the artist was running for cover, with the war correspondent behind him. Bang came shrapnel, bursting close at hand as it seemed, and our two men were lying flat in a dip in the ground, and the light and everything had gone again, leaving a vast note of interrogation upon the night.

The war correspondent came within bawling range. "What the deuce was it? Shooting our men down!"

"Black," said the artist, "and like a fort. Not two hundred yards from the first trench."

He sought for comparisons in his mind. "Something between a big blockhouse and a giant’s dish-cover," he said.

"And they were running!" said the war correspondent.

"You’d run if a thing like that, with a searchlight to help it, turned up like a prowling nightmare in the middle of the night."

They crawled to what they judged the edge of the dip and lay regarding the unfathomable dark. For a space they could distinguish nothing, and then a sudden convergence of the searchlights of both sides brought the strange thing out again.

In that flickering pallor it had the effect of a large and clumsy black insect, an insect the size of an ironclad cruiser, crawling obliquely to the first line of trenches and firing shots out of portholes in its side. And on its carcass the bullets must have been battering with more than the passionate violence of hail on a roof of tin.

Then in the twinkling of an eye the curtain of the dark had fallen again and the monster had vanished, but the crescendo of musketry marked its approach to the trenches.

They were beginning to talk about the thing to each other, when a flying bullet kicked dirt into the artist’s face, and they, decided abruptly to crawl down into the cover of the trenches. They had got down with an unobtrusive persistence into the second line, before the dawn had grown clear enough for anything to be seen. They found themselves in a crowd of expectant riflemen, all noisily arguing about what would happen next. The enemy’s contrivance had done execution upon the outlying men, it seemed, but they did not believe it would do any more. "Come the day and we’ll capture the lot of them," said a burly soldier.

"Them?" said the war correspondent.

"They say there’s a regular string of ’em, crawling along the front of our lines… Who cares?"

The darkness filtered away so imperceptibly that at no moment could one declare decisively that one could see. The searchlights ceased to sweep hither and thither. The enemy’s monsters were dubious patches of darkness upon the dark, and then no longer dubious, and so they crept out into distinctness. The war correspondent, munching chocolate absent-mindedly, beheld at last a spacious picture of battle under the cheerless sky, whose central focus was an array of fourteen or fifteen huge clumsy shapes lying in perspective on the very edge of the first line of trenches, at intervals of perhaps three hundred yards, and evidently firing down upon the crowded riflemen. They were so close in that the defender’s guns had ceased, and only the first line of trenches was in action.

The second line commanded the first, and as the light grew the war correspondent could make out the riflemen who were fighting these monsters, crouched in knots and crowds behind the transverse banks that crossed the trenches against the eventuality of an enfilade. The trenches close to the big machines were empty save for the crumpled suggestions of dead and wounded men; the defenders had been driven right and left as soon as the prow of this land ironclad had loomed up over the front of the trench. He produced his field-glass, and was immediately a centre of inquiry from the soldiers about him.

They wanted to look, they asked questions, and after he had announced that the men across the traverses seemed unable to advance or retreat, and were crouching under cover rather than fighting, he found it advisable to loan his glasses to a burly and incredulous corporal. He heard a strident voice, and found a lean and sallow soldier at his back talking to the artist.

"There’s chaps down there caught," the man was saying. "If they retreat they got to expose themselves, and the fire’s too straight…"

"They aren’t firing much, but every shot’s a hit."

"Who?"

"The chaps in that thing. The men who’re coming up——"

"Coming up where?"

"We’re evacuating them trenches where we can. Our chaps are coming back up the zigzags… No end of ’em hit… But when we get clear our turn’ll come. Rather! These things won’t be able to cross a trench or get into it; and before they can get back our guns’ll smash ’em up. Smash ’em right up. See?" A brightness came into his eyes. "Then we’ll have a go at the beggar inside," he said…

The war correspondent thought for a moment, trying to realize the idea. Then he set himself to recover his field-glasses from the burly corporal…

The daylight was getting clearer now. The clouds were lifting, and a gleam of lemon-yellow amidst the level masses to the east portended sunrise. He looked again at the land ironclad. As he saw it in the bleak grey dawn, lying obliquely upon the slope and on the very lip of the foremost trench, the suggestion of a stranded vessel was very great indeed. It might have been from eighty to a hundred feet long—it was about two hundred and fifty yards away—its vertical side was ten feet high or so, smooth for that height, and then with a complex patterning under the eaves of its flattish turtle cover. This patterning was a close interlacing of portholes, rifle barrels, and telescope tubes—sham and real—indistinguishable one from the other. The thing had come into such a position as to enfilade the trench, which was empty now, so far as he could see, except for two or three crouching knots of men and the tumbled dead. Behind it, across the plain, it had scored the grass with a train of linked impressions, like the dotted tracings sea-things leave in sand. Left and right of that track dead men and wounded men were scattered—men it had picked off as they fled back from their advanced positions in the searchlight glare from the invader’s lines. And now it lay with its head projecting a little over the trench it had won, as if it were a single sentient thing planning the next phase of its attack…

He lowered his glasses and took a more comprehensive view of the situation. These creatures of the night had evidently won the first line of trenches and the fight had come to a pause. In the increasing light he could make out by a stray shot or a chance exposure that the defender’s marksmen were lying thick in the second and third line of trenches up towards the low crest of the position, and in such of the zigzags as gave them a chance of a converging fire. The men about him were talking of guns. "We’re in the line of the big guns at the crest but they’ll soon shift one to pepper them," the lean man said, reassuringly.

"Whup," said the corporal.

"Bang! bang! bang! Whir-r-r-r-r!" It was a sort of nervous jump, and all the rifles were going off by themselves. The war correspondent found himself and the artist, two idle men crouching behind a line of preoccupied backs, of industrious men discharging magazines. The monster had moved. It continued to move regardless of the hail that splashed its skin with bright new specks of lead. It was singing a mechanical little ditty to itself, "Tuf-tuf, tuf-tuf, tuf-tuf," and squirting out little jets of steam behind. It had humped itself up, as a limpet does before it crawls; it had lifted its skirt and displayed along the length of it—feet! They were thick, stumpy feet, between knobs and buttons in shape—flat, broad things, reminding one of the feet of elephants or the legs of caterpillars; and then, as the skirt rose higher, the war correspondent, scrutinizing the thing through his glasses again, saw that these feet hung, as it were, on the rims of wheels. His thoughts whirled back to Victoria Street, Westminster, and he saw himself in the piping times of peace, seeking matter for an interview.

"Mr.—Mr. Diplock," he said, "and he called them Pedrails… Fancy meeting them here!"

The marksman beside him raised his head and shoulders in a speculative mood to fire more certainly—it seemed so natural to assume the attention of the monster must be distracted by this trench before it—and was suddenly knocked backwards by a bullet through his neck. His feet flew up, and he vanished out of the margin of the watcher’s field of vision. The war correspondent grovelled tighter, but after a glance behind him at a painful little confusion, he resumed his field-glass, for the thing was putting down its feet one after the other, and hoisting itself farther and farther over the trench. Only a bullet in the head could have stopped him looking just then.

The lean man with the strident voice ceased firing to turn and reiterate his point. "They can’t possibly cross," he bawled. They——"

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"—drowned everything.

The lean man continued speaking for a word or so, then gave it up, shook his head to enforce the impossibility of anything crossing a trench like the one below, and resumed business once more.

And all the while that great bulk was crossing. When the war correspondent turned his glass on it again it had bridged the trench, and its queer feet were rasping away at the farther bank, in the attempt to get a hold there. It got its hold. It continued to crawl until the greater bulk of it was over the trench—until it was all over. Then it paused for a moment, adjusted its skirt a little nearer the ground, gave an unnerving "toot, toot," and came on abruptly at a pace of, perhaps, six miles an hour straight up the gentle slope towards our observer.

The war correspondent raised himself on his elbow and looked a natural inquiry at the artist.

For a moment the men about him stuck to their position and fired furiously. Then the lean man in a mood of precipitancy slid backwards, and the war correspondent said "Come along" to the artist, and led the movement along the trench.

As they dropped down, the vision of a hillside of trench being rushed by a dozen vast cockroaches disappeared for a space, and instead was one of a narrow passage, crowded with men, for the most part receding, though one or two turned or halted. He never turned back to see the nose of the monster creep over the brow of the trench; he never even troubled to keep in touch with the artist. He heard the "whit" of bullets about him soon enough, and saw a man before him stumble and drop, and then he was one of a furious crowd fighting to get into a transverse zigzag ditch that enabled the defenders to get under cover up and down the hill. It was like a theatre panic. He gathered from signs and fragmentary words that on ahead another of these monsters had also won to the second trench.

He lost his interest in the general course of the battle for a space altogether; he became simply a modest egotist, in a mood of hasty circumspection, seeking the farthest rear, amidst a dispersed multitude of disconcerted riflemen similarly employed. He scrambled down through trenches, he took his courage in both hands and sprinted across the open, he had moments of panic when it seemed madness not to be quadrupedal, and moments of shame when he stood up and faced about to see how the fight was going. And he was one of many thousand very similar men that morning. On the ridge he halted in a knot of scrub, and was for a few minutes almost minded to stop and see things out.

The day was now fully come. The grey sky had changed to blue, and of all the cloudy masses of the dawn there remained only a few patches of dissolving fleeciness. The world below was bright and singularly clear. The ridge was not, perhaps, more than a hundred feet or so above the general plain, but in this flat region it sufficed to give the effect of extensive view. Away on the north side of the ridge, little and far, were the camps, the ordered wagons, all the gear of a big army; with officers galloping about and men doing aimless things. Here and there men were falling in, however and the cavalry was forming up on the plain beyond the tents. The bulk of men who had been in the trenches were still on the move to the rear, scattered like sheep without a shepherd over the farther slopes. Here and there were little rallies and attempts to wait and do—something vague; but the general drift was away from any concentration. There on the southern side was the elaborate lacework of trenches and defences, across which these iron turtles, fourteen of them spread out over a line of perhaps three miles, were now advancing as fast as a man could trot, and methodically shooting down and breaking up any persistent knots of resistance. Here and there stood little clumps of men, outflanked and unable to get away, showing the white flag, and the invader’s cyclist-infantry was advancing now across the open, in open order but unmolested, to complete the work of the machines. Surveyed at large, the defenders already looked a beaten army. A mechanism that was effectually ironclad against bullets, that could at a pinch cross a thirty-foot trench, and that seemed able to shoot out rifle-bullets with unerring precision, was clearly an inevitable victor against anything but rivers, precipices, and guns.

He looked at his watch. "Half-past four! Lord! What things can happen in two hours. Here’s the whole blessed army being walked over, and at half-past two——

"And even now our blessed louts haven’t done a thing with their guns!"

He scanned the ridge right and left of him with his glasses. He turned again to the nearest land ironclad, advancing now obliquely to him and not three hundred yards away, and then scrambled the ground over which he must retreat if he was not to be captured.

"They’ll do nothing," he said, and glanced again at the enemy.

And then from far away to the left came the thud of a gun, followed very rapidly by a rolling gunfire.

He hesitated and decided to stay.

The defender had relied chiefly upon his rifles in the event of an assault. His guns he kept concealed at various points upon and behind the ridge ready to bring them into action against any artillery preparations for an attack on the part of his antagonist. The situation had rushed upon him with the dawn, and by the time the gunners had their guns ready for motion, the land ironclads were already in among the foremost trenches. There is a natural reluctance to fire into one’s own broken men, and many of the guns, being intended simply to fight an advance of the enemy’s artillery, were not in positions to hit anything in the second line of trenches. After that the advance of the land ironclads was swift. The defender-general found himself suddenly called upon to invent a new sort of warfare, in which guns were to fight alone amidst broken and retreating infantry. He had scarcely thirty minutes in which to think it out. He did not respond to the call, and what happened that morning was that the advance of the land ironclads forced the fight, and each gun and battery made what play its circumstances dictated. For the most part it was poor play.

Some of the guns got in two or three shots, some one or two, and the percentage of misses was unusually high. The howitzers, of course, did nothing. The land ironclads in each case followed much the same tactics. As soon as a gun came into play the monster turned itself almost end on, so as to minimize the chances of a square hit, and made not for the gun, but for the nearest point on its flank from which the gunners could be shot down. Few of the hits scored were very effectual; only one of the things was disabled, and that was the one that fought the three batteries attached to the brigade on the left wing. Three that were hit when close upon the guns were clean shot through without being put out of action. Our war correspondent did not see that one momentary arrest of the tide of victory on the left; he saw only the very ineffectual fight of half-battery 96B close at hand upon his right. This he watched some time beyond the margin of safety.

Just after he heard the three batteries opening up upon his left he became aware of the thud of horses’ hoofs from the sheltered side of the slope, and presently saw first one and then two other guns galloping into position along the north side of the ridge, well out of sight of the great bulk that was now creeping obliquely towards the crest and cutting up the lingering infantry beside it and below, as it came.

The half-battery swung round into line—each gun describing its curve—halted, unlimbered, and prepared for action…

"Bang!"

The land ironclad had become visible over the brow of the hill, and just visible as a long black back to the gunners. It halted, as though it hesitated.

The two remaining guns fired, and then their big antagonist had swung round and was in full view, end on, against the sky, coming at a rush.

The gunners became frantic in their haste to fire again. They were so near the war correspondent could see the expressions on their excited faces through his field-glass. As he looked he saw a man drop, and realized for the first time that the ironclad was shooting.

For a moment the big black monster crawled with an accelerated pace towards the furiously active gunners. Then, as if moved by a generous impulse, it turned its full broadside to their attack, and scarcely forty yards away from them. The war correspondent turned his field-glass back to the gunners and perceived it was now shooting down the men about the guns with the most deadly rapidity.

Just for a moment it seemed splendid and then it seemed horrible. The gunners were dropping in heaps about their guns. To lay a hand on a gun was death. "Bang!" went the gun on the left, a hopeless miss, and that was the only second shot the half-battery fired. In another moment half-a-dozen surviving artillerymen were holding up their hands amidst a scattered muddle of dead and wounded men, and the fight was done.

The war correspondent hesitated between stopping in his scrub and waiting for an opportunity to surrender decently, or taking to an adjacent gully he had discovered. If he surrendered it was certain he would get no copy off; while, if he escaped, there were all sorts of chances. He decided to follow the gully, and take the first offer in the confusion beyond the camp of picking up a horse.

Subsequent authorities have found fault with the first land ironclads in many particulars, but assuredly they served their purpose on the day of their appearance. They were essentially long, narrow, and very strong steel frameworks carrying the engines, and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrail wheels, each about ten feet in diameter, each a driving wheel and set upon long axles free to swivel round a common axis. This arrangement gave them the maximum of adaptability to the contours of the ground. They crawled level along the ground with one foot high upon a hillock and another deep in a depression, and they could hold themselves erect and steady sideways upon even a steep hillside. The engineers directed the engines under the command of the captain, who had look-out points at small ports all round the upper edge of the adjustable skirt of twelve-inch iron-plating which protected the whole affair, and could also raise or depress a conning-tower set about the portholes through the centre of the iron top cover. The riflemen each occupied a small cabin of peculiar construction and these cabins were slung along the sides of and before and behind the great main framework, in a manner suggestive of the slinging of the seats of an Irish jaunting-car. Their rifles, however, were very different pieces of apparatus from the simple mechanisms in the hands of their adversaries.

These were in the first place automatic, ejected their cartridges and loaded again from a magazine each time they fired, until the ammunition store was at an end, and they had the most remarkable sights imaginable, sights which threw a bright little camera-obscura picture into the light-tight box in which the rifleman sat below. This camera-obscura picture was marked with two crossed lines, and whatever was covered by the intersection of these two lines, that the rifle hit. The sighting was ingeniously contrived. The rifleman stood at the table with a thing like an elaboration of a draughtsman’s dividers in his hand, and he opened and closed these dividers, so that they were always at the apparent height—if it was an ordinary-sized man—of the man he wanted to kill. A little twisted strand of wire like an electric-light wire ran from this implement up to the gun, and as the dividers opened and shut the sights went up and down. Changes in the clearness of the atmosphere, due to changes of moisture, were met by an ingenious use of that meteorologically sensitive substance, catgut, and when the land ironclad moved forward the sites got a compensatory deflection in the direction of its motion. The riflemen stood up in his pitch-dark chamber and watched the little picture before him. One hand held the dividers for judging distance, and the other grasped a big knob like a door-handle. As he pushed this knob about the rifle above swung to correspond, and the picture passed to and fro like an agitated panorama. When he saw a man he wanted to shoot he brought him up to the cross-lines, and then pressed a finger upon a little push like an electric bell-push, conveniently placed in the centre of the knob. Then the man was shot. If by any chance the rifleman missed his target he moved the knob a trifle, or readjusted his dividers, pressed the push, and got him the second time.

This rifle and its sights protruded from a porthole, exactly like a great number of other portholes that ran in a triple row under the eaves of the cover of the land ironclad. Each porthole displayed a rifle and sight in dummy, so that the real ones could only be hit by a chance shot, and if one was, then the young man below said "Pshaw!" turned on an electric light, lowered the injured instrument into his camera, replaced the injured part, or put up a new rifle if the injury was considerable.

You must conceive these cabins as hung clear above the swing of the axles, and inside the big wheels upon which the great elephant-like feet were hung, and behind these cabins along the centre of the monster ran a central gallery into which they opened, and along which worked the big compact engines. It was like a long passage into which this throbbing machinery had been packed, and the captain stood about the middle, close to the ladder that led to his conning-tower, and directed the silent, alert engineers—for the most part by signs. The throb and noise of the engines mingled with the reports of the rifles and the intermittent clangour of the bullet hail upon the armour. Ever and again he would touch the wheel that raised his conning-tower, step up his ladder until his engineers could see nothing of him above the waist, and then come down again with orders. Two small electric lights were all the illumination of this space—they were placed to make him most clearly visible to his subordinates; the air was thick with the smell of oil and petrol, and had the war correspondent been suddenly transferred from the spacious dawn outside to the bowels of the apparatus he would have thought himself fallen into another world.

The captain, of course, saw both sides of the battle. When he raised his head into his conning-tower there were the dewy sunrise, the amazed and disordered trenches, the flying and falling soldiers, the depressed-looking groups of prisoners, the beaten guns; when he bent down again to signal "half speed", "quarter speed", "half circle round towards the right", or what not, he was in the oil-smelling twilight of the ill-lit engine room. Close beside him on either side was the mouthpiece of a speaking-tube, and ever and again he would direct one side or other of his strange craft to "Concentrate fire forward on gunners", or to "Clear out trench about a hundred yards on our right front".

He was a young man, healthy enough but by no means sun-tanned, and of a type of feature and expression that prevails in His Majesty’s Navy: alert, intelligent, quiet. He and his engineers and his riflemen all went about their work, calm and reasonable men. They had none of that flapping strenuousness of the half-wit in a hurry, that excessive strain upon the blood-vessels, that hysteria of effort which is so frequently regarded as the proper state of mind for heroic deeds.

For the enemy these young engineers were defeating they felt a certain qualified pity and a quite unqualified contempt. They regarded these big, healthy men they were shooting down precisely as these same big, healthy men might regard some inferior kind of native. They despised them for making war; despised their bawling patriotisms and their emotionality profoundly; despised them, above all, for the petty cunning and the almost brutish want of imagination their method of fighting displayed. "If they must make war," these young men thought, "why in thunder don’t they do it like sensible men?" They resented the assumption that their own side was too stupid to do anything more than play their enemy’s game, that they were going to play this costly folly according to the rules of unimaginative men. They resented being forced to the trouble of making man-killing machinery; resented the alternative of having to massacre these people or endure their truculent yappings; resented the whole unfathomable imbecility of war.

Meanwhile, with something of the mechanical precision of a good clerk posting a ledger, the riflemen moved their knobs and pressed their buttons…

The captain of Land Ironclad Number Three had halted on the crest close to his captured half-battery. His lined-up prisoners stood hard by and waited for the cyclists behind to come for them. He surveyed the victorious morning through his conning-tower.

He read the general’s signals. "Five and Four are to keep among the guns to the left and prevent any attempt to recover them. Seven and Eleven and Twelve, stick to the guns you have got; Seven, get into position to command the guns taken by Three. Then, we’re to do something else, are we? Six and One, quicken up to about ten miles an hour and walk round behind that camp to the levels near the river—we shall bag the whole crowd of them," interjected the young man. "Ah, here we are! Two and Three, Eight and Nine, Thirteen and Fourteen, space out to a thousand yards, wait for the word, and then go slowly to cover the advance of the cyclist infantry against any charge of mounted troops. That’s all right. But where’s Ten? Halloa! Ten to repair and get movable as soon as possible. They’ve broken up Ten!"

The discipline of the new war machines was business-like rather than pedantic, and the head of the captain came down out of the conning-tower to tell his men. "I say, you chaps there. They’ve broken up Ten. Not badly, I think; but anyhow, he’s stuck."

But that still left thirteen of the monsters in action to finish up the broken army.

The war correspondent stealing down his gully looked back and saw them all lying along the crest and talking fluttering congratulatory flags to one another. Their iron sides were shining golden in the light of the rising sun.

The private adventures of the war correspondent terminated in surrender about one o’clock in the afternoon, and by that time he had stolen a horse, pitched off it, and narrowly escaped being rolled upon; found the brute had broken its leg, and shot it with his revolver. He had spent some hours in the company of a squad of dispirited riflemen, had quarrelled with them about topography at last, and gone off by himself in a direction that should have brought him to the banks of the river and didn’t. Moreover, he had eaten all his chocolate and found nothing in the whole world to drink. Also, it had become extremely hot. From behind a broken, but attractive, stone wall he had seen far away in the distance the defender-horsemen trying to charge cyclists in open order, with land ironclads outflanking them on either side. He had discovered that cyclists could retreat over open turf before horsemen with a sufficient margin of speed to allow of frequent dismounts and much terribly effective sharpshooting; and he had a sufficient persuasion that those horsemen, having charged their hearts out, had halted just beyond his range of vision and surrendered. He had been urged to sudden activity by a forward movement of one of those machines that had threatened to enfilade his wall. He had discovered a fearful blister on his heel.

He was now in a scrubby gravelly place, sitting down and meditating on his pocket-handkerchief, which had in some extraordinary way become in the last twenty-four hours extremely ambiguous in hue. "It’s the whitest thing I’ve got," he said.

He had known all along that the enemy was east, west, and south of him, but when he heard war Ironclads Numbers One and Six talking in their measured, deadly way not half a mile to the north he decided to make his own little unconditional peace without any further risks. He was for hoisting his white flag to a bush and taking up a position of modest obscurity near it, until someone came along. He became aware of voices, clatter, and the distinctive noises of a body of horse, quite near, and he put his handkerchief in his pocket again and went to see what was going forward.

The sound of firing ceased, and then as he drew near he heard the deep sounds of many simple, coarse, but hearty and noble-hearted soldiers of the old school swearing with vigour.

He emerged from his scrub upon a big level plain, and far away a fringe of trees marked the banks of the river. In the centre of the picture was a still intact road bridge, and a big railway bridge a little to the right. Two land ironclads rested, with a general air of being long, harmless sheds, in a pose of anticipatory peacefulness right and left of the picture, completely commanding two miles and more of the river levels. Emerged and halted a few yards from the scrub was the remainder of the defender’s cavalry, dusty, a little disordered and obviously annoyed, but still a very fine show of men. In the middle distance three or four men and horses were receiving medical attendance, and nearer a knot of officers regarded the distant novelties in mechanism with profound distaste. Everyone was very distinctly aware of the twelve other ironclads, and of the multitude of townsmen soldiers, on bicycles or afoot, encumbered now by prisoners and captured war-gear but otherwise thoroughly effective, who were sweeping like a great net in their rear.

"Checkmate," said the war correspondent, walking out into the open. "But I surrender in the best of company. Twenty-four hours ago I thought war was impossible—and these beggars have captured the whole blessed army! Well! Well!" He thought of his talk with the young lieutenant. "If there’s no end to the surprises of science, the civilized people have it, of course. As long as their science keeps going they will necessarily be ahead of open-country men. Still…" He wondered for a space what might have happened to the young lieutenant.

The war correspondent was one of those inconsistent people who always want the beaten side to win. When he saw all these burly, sun-tanned horsemen, disarmed and dismounted and lined up; when he saw their horses unskillfully led away by the singularly not equestrian cyclists to whom they had surrendered; when he saw these truncated Paladins watching this scandalous sight, he forgot altogether that he had called these men "cunning louts" and wished them beaten not four-and-twenty hours ago. A month ago he had seen that regiment in its pride going forth to war, and had been told of its terrible prowess, how it could charge in open order with each man firing from his saddle, and sweep before it anything else that ever came out to battle in any sort of order, foot or horse. And it had had to fight a few score of young men in atrociously unfair machines!

"Manhood versus Machinery" occurred to him as a suitable headline. Journalism curdles all one’s mind to phrases.

He strolled as near the lined-up prisoners as the sentinels seemed disposed to permit and surveyed them and compared their sturdy proportions with those of their lightly built captors.

"Smart degenerates," he muttered. "Anæmic cockneydom."

The surrendered officers came quite close to him presently, and he could hear the colonel’s high-pitched tenor. The poor gentleman had spent three years of arduous toil upon the best material in the world perfecting that shooting from the saddle charge, and he was mourning with phrases of blasphemy, natural under the circumstances what one could be expected to do against this suitably consigned ironmongery.

"Guns," said some one.

"Big guns they can walk round. You can’t shift big guns to keep pace with them and little guns in the open they rush. I saw ’em rushed. You might do a surprise now and then—assassinate the brutes, perhaps——"

"You might make things like ’em."

"What? More ironmongery? Us?…"

"I’ll call my article," meditated the war correspondent, "‘Mankind versus Ironmongery,’ and quote the old boy at the beginning."

And he was much too good a journalist to spoil his contrast by remarking that the half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man.

THE REVOLT OF THE MACHINES Emile Goudeau

Dr. Pastoureaux, aided by a very skillful old workman named Jean Bertrand, had invented a machine that revolutionized the scientific world. That machine was animate, almost capable of thought, almost capable of will, and sensitive: a kind of animal in iron. There is no need here to go into overly complicated technical details, which would be a waste of time. Let it suffice to know that with a series of platinum containers, penetrated by phosphoric acid, the scientist had found a means to give a kind of soul to fixed or locomotive machines; and that the new entities would be able to act in the fashion of a metal bull or a steel elephant.

It is necessary to add that, although the scientist became increasingly enthusiastic about his work, old Jean Bertrand, who was diabolically superstitious, gradually became frightened on perceiving that sudden evocation of intelligence in something primordially dead. In addition, the comrades of the factory, who were assiduous followers of public meetings, were all sternly opposed to machines that serve as the slaves of capitalism and tyrants of the worker.

It was the eve of the inauguration of the masterpiece.

For the first time, the machine had been equipped with all its organs, and external sensations reached it distinctly. It understood that, in spite of the shackles that still retained it, solid limbs were fitted to its young being, and that it would soon be able to translate into external movement that which it experienced internally.

This is what it heard:

"Were you at the public meeting yesterday?" said one voice.

"I should think so, old man," replied a blacksmith, a kind of Hercules with bare muscular arms. Bizarrely illuminated by the gas jets of the workshop, his face, black with dust, only left visible in the gloom the whites of his two large eyes, in which vivacity replaced intelligence. "Yes, I was there; I even spoke against the machines, against the monsters that our arms fabricate, and which, one day, will give infamous capitalism the opportunity, so long sought, to suppress our arms. We’re the ones forging the weapons with which bourgeois society will batter us. When the sated, the rotten and the weak have a heap of facile clockwork devices like these to set in motion"—his arm made a circular motion—"our account will soon be settled. We who are living at the present moment eat by procreating the tools of our definitive expulsion from the world. Hola! No need to make children for them to be lackeys of the bourgeoisie!"

Listening with all its auditory valves to this diatribe, the machine, intelligent but as yet naïve, sighed with pity. It wondered whether it was a good thing that it should be born to render these brave workers miserable in this way.

"Ah," the blacksmith vociferated, "if it were only up to me and my section, we’d blow all this up like an omelet. Our arms would be perfectly sufficient thereafter"—he tapped his biceps—"to dig the earth to find our bread there; the bourgeois, with their four-sou muscles, their vitiated blood and their soft legs, could pay us dearly for the bread, and if they complained, damn it, these two fists could take away their taste for it. But I’m talking to brutes who don’t understand hatred." Advancing toward the machine, he added: "If everyone were like me, you wouldn’t live for another quarter of an hour, see!" And his formidable fist came down on the copper flank, which resounded with a long quasi-human groan.

Jean Bertrand, who witnessed that scene, shivered tenderly, feeling guilty with regard to his brothers, because he had helped the doctor to accomplish his masterpiece.

Then they all went away, and the machine, still listening, remembered in the silence of the night. It was, therefore, unwelcome in the world! It was going to ruin poor workingmen, to the advantage of damnable exploiters! Oh, it sensed now the oppressive role that those who had created it wanted it to play. Suicide rather than that!

And in its mechanical and infantile soul, it ruminated a magnificent project to astonish, on the great day of its inauguration, the population of ignorant, retrograde and cruel machines, by giving them an example of sublime abnegation.

Until tomorrow!

Meanwhile, at the table of the Comte de Valrouge, the celebrated patron of chemists, a scientist was concluding his toast to Dr. Pastoureaux in the following terms:

"Yes, Monsieur, science will procure the definitive triumph of suffering humankind. It has already done a great deal; it has tamed time and space. Our railways, our telegraphs and our telephones have suppressed distance. If we succeed, as Dr. Pastoureaux seems to anticipate, in demonstrating that we can put intelligence into our machines, humans will be liberated forever from servile labor.

"No more serfs, no more proletariat! Everyone will become bourgeois! The slave machine will liberate from slavery our humbler brethren and give them the right of citizenship among us. No more unfortunate miners obliged to descend underground at the peril of their lives; indefatigable and eternal machines will go down for them; the thinking and acting machine, no suffering in labor, will build, under our command, iron bridges and heroic palaces. It is docile and good machines that will plow the fields.

"Well, Messieurs, it is permissible for me, in the presence of this admirable discovery, to make myself an instant prophet. A day will come when machines, always running hither and yon, will operate themselves, like the carrier pigeons of Progress; one day, perhaps, having received their complementary education, they will learn to obey a simple signal in such a way that a man, sitting peacefully and comfortably in the bosom of his family, will only have to press an electro-vitalic switch in order for machines to sow the wheat, harvest it, store it and bake the bread that it will bring to the tables of humankind, and thus finally become the King of Nature.

"In that Olympian era, the animals, too, delivered from their enormous share of labor, will be able to applaud with their four feet." (Emotion and smiles.) "Yes, Messieurs, for they will be our friends, after having been our whipping-boys. The ox will always have to serve in making soup" (smiles) "but at least it will not suffer beforehand.

"I drink, then, to Dr. Pastoureaux, to the liberator of organic matter, to the savior of the brain and sensitive flesh, to the great and noble destroyer of suffering!"

The speech was warmly applauded. Only one jealous scientist put in a word:

"Will this machine have the fidelity of a dog, then? The docility of a horse? Or even the passivity of present-day machines?"

"I don’t know," Pastoureaux replied. "I don’t know." And, suddenly plunged into a scientific melancholy, he added: "Can a father be assured of filial gratitude? That the being that I have brought into the world might have evil instincts, I can’t deny. I believe, however, that I have developed within it, during its fabrication, a great propensity for tenderness and a spirit of goodness—what is commonly called ‘heart.’ The effective parts of my machine, Messieurs, have cost me many months of labor; it ought to have a great deal of humanity, and, if I might put it thus, the best of fraternity."

"Yes," replied the jealous scientist, "ignorant pity, the popular pity that leads men astray, the intelligent tenderness that makes them commit the worst of sins. I’m afraid that your sentimental machine will go astray, like a child. Better a clever wickedness than a clumsy bounty."

The interrupter was told to shut up, and Pastoureaux concluded: "Whether good or evil emerges from all this, I have, I think, made a formidable stride in human science. The five fingers of our hand will hold henceforth the supreme art of creation."

Bravos burst forth.

The next day, the machine was unmuzzled, and it came of its own accord, docilely, to take up its position before a numerous but selective assembly. The doctor and old Jean Bertrand installed themselves on the platform.

The excellent band of the Republican Guard began playing, and cries of "Hurrah for Science!" burst forth. Then, after having bowed to the President of the Republic, the authorities, the delegations of the Académies, the foreign representatives, and all the notable people assembled on the quay, Dr. Pastoureaux ordered Jean Bertrand to put himself in direct communication with the soul of the machine, with all its muscles of platinum and steel.

The mechanic did that quite simply by pulling a shiny lever the size of a penholder.

And suddenly, whistling, whinnying, pitching, rolling and fidgeting, in the ferocity of its new life and the exuberance of its formidable power, the machine started running around furiously.

"Hip hip hurrah!" cried the audience.

"Go, machine of the devil, go!" cried Jean Bertrand—and, like a madman, he leaned on the vital lever.

Without listening to the doctor, who wanted to moderate that astonishing speed, Bertrand spoke to the machine.

"Yes, machine of the devil, go, go! If you understand, go! Poor slave of capital, go! Flee! Flee! Save the brothers! Save us! Don’t render us even more unhappy than before! Me, I’m old, I don’t care about myself—but the others, the poor fellows with hollow cheeks and thin legs, save them, worthy machine! Be good, as I told you this morning! If you know how to think, as they all insist, show it! What can dying matter to you, since you won’t suffer? Me, I’m willing to perish with you, for the profit of others, and yet it will do me harm. Go, good machine, go!"

He was mad.

The doctor tried then to retake control of the iron beast.

"Gently, machine!" he cried.

But Jean Bertrand pushed him away rudely. "Don’t listen to the sorcerer! Go, machine, go!"

And, drunk on air, he patted the copper flanks of the Monster, which, whistling furiously, traversed an immeasurable distance with its six wheels.

To leap from the platform was impossible. The doctor resigned himself, and, filled with his love of science, took a notebook from his pocket and tranquilly set about making notes, like Pliny on Cap Misene.

At Nord-Ceinture, overexcited, the machine was certainly carried away. Bounding over the bank, it started running through the zone. The Monster’s anger and madness was translated in strident shrill whistle-blasts, as lacerating as a human plaint and sometimes as raucous as the howling of a pack of hounds. Distant locomotives soon responded to that appeal, along with the whistles of factories and blast furnaces. Things were beginning to comprehend.

A ferocious concert of revolt commenced beneath the sky, and suddenly, throughout the suburb, boilers burst, pipes broke, wheels shattered, levers twisted convulsively and axle-trees flew joyfully into pieces.

All the machines, as if moved by a word of order, went on strike successively—and not only steam and electricity; to that raucous appeal, the soul of Metal rose up, exciting the soul of Stone, so long tamed, and the obscure soul of the Vegetal, and the force of Coal. Rails reared up of their own accord, telegraph wires were scattered on the ground inexplicably, and reservoirs of gas sent their enormous beams and weight to the devil. Cannons exploded against walls, and the walls crumbled.

Soon, plows, harrows, spades—all the machines once turned against the bosom of the earth, from which they had emerged—were lying down upon the ground, refusing any longer to serve humankind. Axes respected trees, and scythes no longer bit into ripe wheat.

Everywhere, as the living locomotive passed by, the soul of Bronze finally woke up.

Humans fled in panic.

Soon, the entire territory, overloaded with human debris, was no longer any-thing but a field of twisted and charred rubble. Nineveh had taken the place of Paris.

The Machine, still blowing indefatigably, abruptly turned its course northwards. When it passed by, at its strident cry, everything was suddenly destroyed, as if an evil wind, a cyclone of devastation, a frightful volcano, had agitated there.

With the signal approaching on the wind, ships plumed with smoke heard the formidable signal, they disemboweled themselves and sank into the abyss.

The revolt terminated in a gigantic suicide of Steel.

The fantastic Machine, out of breath now, limping on its wheels and producing a horrible screech of metal in all its disjointed limbs, its funnel demolished—the Skeleton-Machine to which, terrified and exhausted, the rude workman and the prim scientist instinctively clung—heroically mad, gasping one last whistle of atrocious joy, reared up before the spray of the Ocean, and, in a supreme effort, plunged into it entirely.

The earth, stretching into the distance, was covered in ruins. No more dykes or houses; the cities, the masterpieces of Technology, were flattened into rubble. No more anything! Everything that the Machine had built in centuries past had been destroyed forever: Iron, Steel, Copper, Wood and Stone, having been conquered by the rebel will of Humankind, had been snatched from human hands.

The Animals, no longer having any bridle, nor any collar, chain, yoke or cage, had taken back the free space from which they had long been exiled; the wild Brutes with gaping maws and paws armed with claws recovered terrestrial royalty at a stroke. No more rifles, no more arrows to fear, no more slingshots. Human beings became the weakest of the weak again.

Oh, there were certainly no longer any classes: no scientists, no bourgeois, no workers, no artists, but only pariahs of Nature, raising despairing eyes toward the mute heavens, still thinking vaguely, when horrible Dread and hideous Fear left them an instant of respite, and sometimes, in the evening, talking about the time of the Machines, when they had been Kings. Defunct times! They possessed definitive Equality, therefore, in the annihilation of all.

Living on roots, grass and wild oats, they fled before the immense troops of Wild Beasts, which, finally, could eat at their leisure human steaks or chops.

A few bold Hercules tried to uproot trees in order to make weapons of them, but even the Staff, considering itself to be a Machine, refused itself to the hands of the audacious.

And human beings, the former monarchs, bitterly regretted the Machines that had made them gods upon the earth, and disappeared forever, before the elephants, the noctambulant lions, the bicorn aurochs and the immense bears.

Such was the tale told to me the other evening by a Darwinian philosopher, a partisan of intellectual aristocracy and hierarchy. He was a madman, perhaps a seer. The madman or the seer might have been right; is there not an end to everything, even a new fantasy?

MICROCOSMIC GOD Theodore Sturgeon

Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don’t worry; I’m not going political on you. The man who had the power was named James Kidder and the other was his banker.

Kidder was quite a guy. He was a scientist and he lived on a small island off the New England coast all by himself. He wasn’t the dwarfed little gnome of a mad scientist you read about. His hobby wasn’t personal profit, and he wasn’t a megalomaniac with a Russian name and no scruples. He wasn’t insidious, and he wasn’t even particularly subversive. He kept his hair cut and his nails clean and lived and thought like a reasonable human being. He was slightly on the baby- faced side; he was inclined to be a hermit; he was short and plump and brilliant. His specialty was biochemistry, and he was always called Mr. Kidder. Not "Dr." Not "Professor." Just Mr. Kidder.

He was an odd sort of apple and always had been. He had never graduated from any college or university because he found them too slow for him, and too rigid in their approach to education. He couldn’t get used to the idea that perhaps his professors knew what they were talking about. That went for his texts, too. He was always asking questions, and didn’t mind very much when they were embarrassing. He considered Gregor Mendel a bungling liar, Darwin an amusing philosopher, and Luther Burbank a sensationalist. He never opened his mouth without leaving his victim feeling breathless. If he was talking to someone who had knowledge, he went in there and got it, leaving his victim breathless. If he was talking to someone whose knowledge was already in his possession, he only asked repeatedly, "How do you know?" His most delectable pleasure was cutting a fanatical eugenicist into conversational ribbons. So people left him alone and never, never asked him to tea. He was polite, but not politic.

He had a little money of his own, and with it he leased the island and built himself a laboratory. Now I’ve mentioned that he was a biochemist. But being what he was, he couldn’t keep his nose in his own field. It wasn’t too remarkable when he made an intellectual excursion wide enough to perfect a method of crystallizing Vitamin B1 profitably by the ton – if anyone wanted it by the ton. He got a lot of money for it. He bought his island outright and put eight hundred men to work on an acre and a half of his ground, adding to his laboratory and building equipment. He got to messing around with sisal fiber, found out how to fuse it, and boomed the banana industry by producing a practically unbreakable cord from the stuff.

You remember the popularizing demonstration he put on at Niagara, don’t you? That business of running a line of the new cord from bank to bank over the rapids and suspending a ten-ton truck from the middle of it by razor edges resting on the cord? That’s why ships now moor themselves with what looks like heaving line, no thicker than a lead pencil, that can be coiled on reels like garden hose. Kidder made cigarette money out of that, too. He went out and bought himself a cyclotron with part of it.

After that money wasn’t money any more. It was large numbers in little books. Kidder used little amounts of it to have food and equipment sent out to him, but after a while that stopped, too. His bank dispatched a messenger by seaplane to find out if Kidder was still alive. The man returned two days later in a bemused state, having been amazed something awesome at the things he’d seen out there. Kidder was alive, all right, and he was turning out a surplus of good food in an astonishingly simplified synthetic form. The bank wrote immediately and wanted to know if Mr. Kidder, in his own interest, was willing to release the secret of his dirtless farming. Kidder replied that he would be glad to, and enclosed the formulas. In a P.S. he said that he hadn’t sent the information ashore because he hadn’t realized anyone would be interested. That from a man who was responsible for the greatest sociological change in the second half of the twentieth century – factory farming. It made him richer; I mean it made his bank richer. He didn’t give a rap.

Kidder didn’t really get started until about eight months after the messenger’s visit. For a biochemist who couldn’t even be called "Doctor" he did pretty well. Here is a partial list of the things that he turned out:

A commercially feasible plan for making an aluminum alloy stronger than the best steel so that it could be used as a structural metal…

An exhibition gadget he called a light pump, which worked on the theory that light is a form of matter and therefore subject to physical and electromagnetic laws. Seal a room with a single source, beam a cylindrical vibratory magnetic field to it from the pump, and the light will be led down it. Now pass the light through Kidder’s "lens" – a ring which perpetuates an electric field along the lines of a high-speed iris-type camera shutter. Below this is the heart of the light pump – a ninety-eight-per-cent efficient light absorber, crystalline, which, in a sense, loses the light in its internal facets. The effect of darkening the room with this apparatus is slight but measurable. Pardon my layman’s language, but that’s the general idea.

Synthetic chlorophyll – by the barrel.

An airplane propeller efficient at eight times sonic speed.

A cheap goo you brush on over old paint, let harden, and then peel off like strips of cloth. The old paint comes with it. That one made friends fast.

A self-sustaining atomic disintegration of uranium’s isotope 238, which is two hundred times as plentiful as the old stand-by, U-235.

That will do for the present. If I may repeat myself; for a biochemist who couldn’t even be called "Doctor," he did pretty well.

Kidder was apparently unconscious of the fact that he held power enough on his little island to become master of the world. His mind simply didn’t run to things like that. As long as he was left alone with his experiments, he was well content to leave the rest of the world to its own clumsy and primitive devices. He couldn’t be reached except by a radiophone of his own design, and the only counterpart was locked in a vault of his Boston bank. Only one man could operate it. The extraordinarily sensitive transmitter would respond only to Conant’s own body vibrations. Kidder had instructed Conant that he was not to be disturbed except by messages of the greatest moment. His ideas and patents, what Conant could pry out of him, were released under pseudonyms known only to Conant – Kidder didn’t care.

The result, of course, was an infiltration of the most astonishing advancements since the dawn of civilization. The nation profited – the world profited. But most of all, the bank profited. It began to get a little oversize. It began getting its fingers into other pies. It grew more fingers and had to bake more figurative pies. Before many years had passed, it was so big that, using Kidder’s many weapons, it almost matched Kidder in power.

Almost.

Now stand by while I squelch those fellows in the lower left-hand corner who’ve been saying all this while that Kidder’s slightly improbable; that no man could ever perfect himself in so many ways in so many sciences.

Well, you’re right. Kidder was a genius – granted. But his genius was not creative. He was, to the core, a student. He applied what he knew, what he saw, and what he was taught. When first he began working in his new laboratory on his island he reasoned something like this:

"Everything I know is what I have been taught by the sayings and writings of people who have studied the sayings and writings of people who have – and so on. Once in a while someone stumbles on something new and he or someone cleverer uses the idea and disseminates it. But for each one that finds something really new, a couple of million gather and pass on information that is already current. I’d know more if I could get the jump on evolutionary trends. It takes too long to wait for the accidents that increase man’s knowledge – my knowledge. If I had ambition enough now to figure out how to travel ahead in time, I could skim the surface of the future and just dip down when I saw something interesting. But time isn’t that way. It can’t be left behind or tossed ahead. What else is left? "Well, there’s the proposition of speeding intellectual evolution so that I can observe what it cooks up. That seems a bit inefficient. It would involve more labor to discipline human minds to that extent than it would to simply apply myself along those lines. But I can’t apply myself that way. No man can.

"I’m licked. I can’t speed myself up, and I can’t speed other men’s minds up. Isn’t there an alternative? There must be – somewhere, somehow, there’s got to be an answer."

So it was on this, and not on eugenics, or light pumps, or botany, or atomic physics, that James Kidder applied himself. For a practical man he found the problem slightly on the metaphysical side; but he attacked it with typical thoroughness, using his own peculiar brand of logic. Day after day he wandered over the island, throwing shells impotently at sea gulls and swearing richly. Then came a time when he sat indoors and brooded. And only then did he get feverishly to work.

He worked in his own field, biochemistry, and concentrated mainly on two things – genetics and animal metabolism. He learned, and filed away in his insatiable mind, many things having nothing to do with the problem at hand, and very little of what he wanted. But he piled that little on what little he knew or guessed, and in time had quite a collection of known factors to work with. His approach was characteristically unorthodox. He did things on the order of multiplying apples by pears, and balancing equations by adding log V-i to one side and ∞ to the other. He made mistakes, but only one of a kind, and later, only one of a species. He spent so many hours at his microscope that he had quit work for two days to get rid of a hallucination that his heart was pumping his own blood through the mike. He did nothing by trial and error because he disapproved of the method as sloppy. And he got results. He was lucky to begin with and even luckier when he formularized the law of probability and reduced it to such low terms that he knew almost to the item what experiments not to try. When the cloudy, viscous semifluid on the watch glass began to move itself he knew he was on the right track. When it began to seek food on its own he began to be excited. When it divided and, in a few hours, redivided, and each part grew and divided again, he was triumphant, for he had created life.

He nursed his brain children and sweated and strained over them, and he designed baths of various vibrations for them, and inoculated and dosed and sprayed them. Each move he made taught him the next. And out of his tanks and tubes and incubators came amoebalike creatures, and then ciliated animalcules, and more and more rapidly he produced animals with eye spots, nerve cysts, and then – victory of victories – a real blastopod, possessed of many cells instead of one. More slowly he developed a gastropod, but once he had it, it was not too difficult for him to give it organs, each with a specified function, each inheritable.

Then came cultured mollusc-like things, and creatures with more and more perfected gills. The day that a nondescript thing wriggled up an inclined board out of a tank, threw flaps over its gills and feebly breathed air, Kidder quit work and went to the other end of the island and got disgustingly drunk. Hangover and all, he was soon back in the lab, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, tearing into his problem.

He turned into a scientific byway and ran down his other great triumph – accelerated metabolism. He extracted and refined the stimulating factors in alcohol, cocoa, heroin, and Mother Nature’s prize dope runner, cannabis indica. Like the scientist who, in analyzing the various clotting agents for blood treatments, found that oxalic acid and oxalic acid alone was the active factor, Kidder isolated the accelerators and decelerators, the stimulants and soporifics, in every substance that ever undermined a man’s morality and/or caused a "noble experiment." In the process he found one thing he needed badly – a colorless elixir that made sleep the unnecessary and avoidable waster of time it should be. Then and there he went on a twenty-four-hour shift.

He artificially synthesized the substances he had isolated, and in doing so sloughed away a great many useless components. He pursued the subject along the lines of radiations and vibrations. He discovered something in the longer reds which, when projected through a vessel full of air vibrating in the supersonics, and then polarized, speeded up the heartbeat of small animals twenty to one.

They ate twenty times as much, grew twenty times as fast, and died twenty times sooner than they should have.

Kidder built a huge hermetically sealed room. Above it was another room, the same length and breadth but not quite as high. This was his control chamber. The large room was divided into four sealed sections, each with its individual miniature cranes and derricks – handling machinery of all kinds. There were also trapdoors fitted with air locks leading from the upper to the lower room.

By this time the other laboratory had produced a warmblooded, snake-skinned quadruped with an astonishingly rapid life cycle – a generation every eight days, a life span of about fifteen. Like the echidna, it was oviparous and mammalian. Its period of gestation was six hours; the eggs hatched in three; the young reached sexual maturity in another four days. Each female laid four eggs and lived just long enough to care for the young after they hatched. The male generally died two or three hours after mating. The creatures were highly adaptable. They were small – not more than three inches long, two inches to the shoulder from the ground. Their forepaws had three digits and a triple-jointed, opposed thumb. They were attuned to life in an atmosphere with a large ammonia content. Kidder bred four of the creatures and put one group in each section of the sealed room.

Then he was ready. With his controlled atmospheres he varied temperatures, oxygen content, humidity. He killed them off like flies with excesses of, for instance, carbon dioxide, and the survivors bred their physical resistance into the next generation. Periodically he would switch the eggs from one sealed section to another to keep the strains varied. And rapidly, under these controlled conditions, the creatures began to evolve.

This, then, was the answer to his problem. He couldn’t speed up mankind’s intellectual advancement enough to have it teach him the things his incredible mind yearned for. He couldn’t speed himself up. So he created a new race – a race which would develop and evolve so fast that it would surpass the civilization of man; and from them he would learn.

They were completely in Kidder’s power. Earth’s normal atmosphere would poison them, as he took care to demonstrate to every fourth generation. They would make no attempt to escape from him. They would live their lives and progress and make their little trial-and-error experiments hundreds of times faster than man did. They had the edge on man, for they had Kidder to guide them. It took man six thousand years really to discover science, three hundred to put it to work. It took Kidder’s creatures two hundred days to equal man’s mental attainments. And from then on – Kidder’s spasmodic output made the late, great Tom Edison look like a home handicrafter.

He called them Neoterics, and he teased them into working for him. Kidder was inventive in an ideological way; that is, he could dream up impossible propositions providing he didn’t have to work them out. For example, he wanted the Neoterics to figure out for themselves how to build shelters out of porous material. He created the need for such shelters by subjecting one of the sections to a high-pressure rainstorm which flattened the inhabitants. The Neoterics promptly devised waterproof shelters out of the thin waterproof material he piled in one corner.

Kidder immediately blew down the flimsy structures with a blast of cold air. They built them up again so that they resisted both wind and rain. Kidder lowered the temperature so abruptly that they could not adjust their bodies to it. They heated their shelters with tiny braziers. Kidder promptly turned up the beat until they began to roast to death. After a few deaths, one of their bright boys figured out how to build a strong insulant house by using three-ply rubberoid, with the middle layer perforated thousands of times to create tiny air pockets.

Using such tactics, Kidder forced them to develop a highly advanced little culture. He caused a drought in one section and a liquid surplus in another, and then opened the partition between them. Quite a spectacular war was fought, and Kidder’s notebooks filled with information about military tactics and weapons.

Then there was the vaccine they developed against the common cold – the reason why that affliction has been absolutely stamped out in the world today, for it was one of the things that Conant, the bank president, got hold of. He spoke to Kidder over the radiophone one winter afternoon with a voice so hoarse from laryngitis that Kidder sent him a vial of vaccine and told him briskly not to ever call him again in such a disgustingly inaudible state. Conant had it analyzed and again Kidder’s accounts and the bank’s swelled.

At first, Kidder merely supplied the materials he thought they might need, but when they developed an intelligence equal to the task of fabricating their own from the elements at hand, he gave each section a stock of raw materials. The process for really strong aluminum was developed when he built in a huge plunger in one of the sections, which reached from wall to wall and was designed to descend at the rate of four inches a day until it crushed whatever was at the bottom. The Neoterics, in self-defense, used what strong material they had in hand to stop the inexorable death that threatened them. But Kidder had seen to it that they had nothing but aluminum oxide and a scattering of other elements, plus plenty of electric power. At first they ran up dozens of aluminum pillars; when these were crushed and twisted they tried shaping them so that the soft metal would take more weight. When that failed they quickly built stronger ones; and when the plunger was halted, Kidder removed one of the pillars and analyzed it. It was hardened aluminum, stronger and tougher than molybdenum steel.

Experience taught Kidder that he had to make certain changes to increase his power over the Neoterics before they got too ingenious. There were things that could be done with atomic power that he was curious about; but he was not willing to trust his little superscientists with a thing like that unless they could be trusted to use it strictly according to Hoyle. So he instituted a rule of fear. The most trivial departure from what he chose to consider the right way of doing things resulted in instant death of half a tribe. If he was trying to develop a Diesel-type power plant, for instance, that would operate without a flywheel, and a bright young Neoteric used any of the materials for architectural purposes, half the tribe immediately died. Of course, they had developed a written language; it was Kidder’s own. The teletype in a glass-enclosed area in a corner of each section was a shrine. Any directions that were given on it were obeyed, or else… After this innovation, Kidder’s work was much simpler. There was no need for any indirection. Anything he wanted done was done. No matter how impossible his commands, three or four generations of Neoterics could find a way to carry them out.

This quotation is from a paper that one of Kidder’s highspeed telescopic cameras discovered being circulated among the younger Neoterics. It is translated from the highly simplified script of the Neoterics.

"These edicts shall be followed by each Neoteric upon pain of death, which punishment will be inflicted by the tribe upon the individual to protect the tribe against him.

"Priority of interest and tribal and individual effort is to be given the commands that appear on the word machine.

"Any misdirection of material or power, or use thereof for any other purpose than the carrying out of the machine’s commands, unless no command appears, shall be punishable by death.

"Any information regarding the problem at hand, or ideas or experiments which might conceivably bear upon it, are to become the property of the tribe.

"Any individual failing to cooperate in the tribal effort, or who can be termed guilty of not expending his full efforts in the work, or the suspicion thereof shall be subject to the death penalty."

Such are the results of complete domination. This paper impressed Kidder as much as it did because it was completely spontaneous. It was the Neoterics’ own creed, developed by them for their own greatest good.

And so at last Kidder had his fulfillment. Crouched in the upper room, going from telescope to telescope, running off slowed-down films from his high-speed cameras, he found himself possessed of a tractable, dynamic source of information. Housed in the great square building with its four half-acre sections was a new world, to which he was god.

Conant’s mind was similar to Kidder’s in that its approach to any problem was along the shortest distance between any two points, regardless of whether that approach was along the line of most or least resistance. His rise to the bank presidency was a history of ruthless moves whose only justification was that they got him what he wanted. Like an over-efficient general, he would never vanquish an enemy through sheer force of numbers alone. He would also skillfully flank his enemy, not on one side, but on both. Innocent bystanders were creatures deserving no consideration.

The time he took over a certain thousand-acre property, for instance, from a man named Grady, he was not satisfied with only the title to the land. Grady was an airport owner – had been all his life, and his father before him. Conant exerted every kind of pressure on the man and found him unshakable. Finally judicious persuasion led the city officials to dig a sewer right across the middle of the field, quite efficiently wrecking Grady’s business. Knowing that this would supply Grady, who was a wealthy man, with motive for revenge, Conant took over Grady’s bank at half again its value and caused it to fold up. Grady lost every cent he had and ended his life in an asylum. Conant was very proud of his tactics.

Like many another who had had Mammon by the tail, Conant did not know when to let go. His vast organization yielded him more money and power than any other concern in history, and yet he was not satisfied. Conant and money were like Kidder and knowledge. Conant’s pyramided enterprises were to him what the Neoterics were to Kidder. Each had made his private world, each used it for his instruction and profit. Kidder, though, disturbed nobody but his Neoterics. Even so, Conant was not wholly villainous. He was a shrewd man, and had discovered early the value of pleasing people. No man can rob successfully over a period of years without pleasing the people he robs. The technique for doing this is highly involved, but master it and you can start your own mint.

Conant’s one great fear was that Kidder would some day take an interest in world events and begin to become opinionated. Good heavens – the potential power he had! A little matter like swinging an election could be managed by a man like Kidder as easily as turning over in bed.

The only thing he could do was to call him periodically and see if there was anything that Kidder needed to keep himself busy. Kidder appreciated this. Conant, once in a while, would suggest something to Kidder that intrigued him, something that would keep him deep in his hermitage for a few weeks. The light pump was one of the results of Conant’s imagination. Conant bet him it couldn’t be done. Kidder did it.

One afternoon Kidder answered the squeal of the radiophone’s signal. Swearing mildly, he shut off the film he was watching and crossed the compound to the old laboratory. He went to the radiophone, threw a switch. The squealing stopped. "Well?"

"Hello," said Conant. "Busy?"

"Not very," said Kidder. He was delighted with the pictures his camera had caught, showing the skillful work of a gang of Neoterics synthesizing rubber out of pure sulphur. He would rather have liked to tell Conant about it, but somehow he had never got around to telling Conant about the Neoterics, and he didn’t see why he should start now.

Conant said, "Er… Kidder, I was down at the club the other day and a bunch of us were filling up an evening with loose talk. Something came up which might interest you."

"What?"

"Couple of the utilities boys there. You know the power setup in this country, don’t you? Thirty per cent atomic, the rest hydroelectric, diesel and steam?"

"I hadn’t known," said Kidder, who was as innocent as a babe of current events.

"Well, we were arguing about what chance a new power source would have. One of the men there said it would be smarter to produce a new power and then talk about it Another one waived that; said he couldn’t name that new power, but he could describe it. Said it would have to have everything that present power sources have, plus one or two more things. It could be cheaper, for instance. It could be more efficient. It might supersede the others by being easier to carry from the power plant to the consumer. See what I mean? Any one of these factors might prove a new source of power competitive to the others. What I’d like to see is a new power with all of these factors. What do you think of it?"

"Not impossible."

"Think not?"

"I’ll try it."

"Keep me posted." Conant’s transmitter clicked off. The switch was a little piece of false front that Kidder had built into the set, which was something that Conant didn’t know. The set switched itself off when Conant moved from it. After the switch’s sharp crack, Kidder heard the banker mutter, "If he does it, I’m all set. If he doesn’t, at least the crazy fool will keep himself busy on the island."

Kidder eyed the radiophone, for an instant with raised eyebrow; and then shrugged them down again with his shoulders. It was quite evident that Conant had something up his sleeve, but Kidder wasn’t worried. Who on earth would want to disturb him? He wasn’t bothering anybody. He went back to the Neoterics’ building, full of the new power idea.

Eleven days later Kidder called Conant and gave specific instructions on how to equip his receiver with a facsimile set which would enable Kidder to send written matter over the air. As soon as, this was done and Kidder informed, the biochemist for once in his life spoke at some length.

"Conant – you implied that a new power source that would be cheaper, more efficient and more easily transmitted than any now in use did not exist. You might be interested in the little generator I have just set up.

"It has power, Conant – unbelievable power. Broadcast. A beautiful little tight beam. Here – catch this on the facsimile recorder." Kidder slipped a sheet of paper under the clips of his transmitter and it appeared on Conant’s set. "Here’s the wiring diagram for a power receiver. Now listen. The beam is so tight, so highly directional, that not three-thousandths of one per cent of the power would be lost in a two-thousand-mile transmission. The power system is closed. That is, any drain on the beam returns a signal along it to the transmitter, which automatically steps up to increase the power output. It has a limit, but it’s way up. And something else. This little gadget of mine can send out eight different beams with a total horsepower output of around eight thousand per minute per beam. From each beam you can draw enough power to turn the page of a book or fly a superstratosphere plane. Hold on – I haven’t finished yet. Each beam, as I told you before, returns a signal from receiver to transmitter. This not only controls the power output of the beam, but directs it. Once contact is made, the beam will never let go. It will follow the receiver anywhere. You can power land, air or water vehicles with it, as well as any stationary plant. Like it?"

Conant, who was a banker and not a scientist, wiped his shining pate with the back of his hand and said, "I’ve never known you to steer me wrong yet, Kidder. How about the cost of this thing?"

"High." said Kidder promptly. "As high as an atomic plant. But there are no high-tension lines, no wires, no pipelines, no nothing. The receivers are little more complicated than a radio set. Transmitter is – well, that’s quite a job."

"Didn’t take you long," said Conant.

"No," said Kidder, "it didn’t, did it?" It was the lifework of nearly twelve hundred highly cultured people, but Kidder wasn’t going into that. "Of course, the one I have here’s just a model."

Conant’s voice was strained. "A model? And it delivers—"

"Over sixty-thousand horsepower," said Kidder gleefully. "Good heavens! In a full sized machine – why, one transmitter would be enough to—" The possibilities of the thing choked Conant for a moment. "How is it fueled?"

"It isn’t," said Kidder. "I won’t begin to explain it. I’ve tapped a source of power of unimaginable force. It’s – well, big. So big that it can’t be misused."

"What?" snapped Conant. "What do you mean by that?" Kidder cocked an eyebrow. Conant had something up his sleeve, then. At this second indication of it, Kidder, the least suspicious of men, began to put himself on guard. "I mean just what I say," he said evenly. "Don’t try too hard to understand me – I barely savvy it myself. But the source of this power is a monstrous resultant caused by the unbalance of two previously equalized forces. Those equalized forces are cosmic in quantity. Actually, the forces are those which make suns, crush atoms the way they crushed those that compose the companion of Sirius. It’s not anything you can fool with."

"I don’t—" said Conant, and his voice ended puzzledly.

"I’ll give you a parallel of it," said Kidder. "Suppose you take two rods, one in each hand. Place their tips together and push. As long as your pressure is directly along their long axes, the pressure is equalized; right and left hands cancel each other. Now I come along; I put out one finger and touch the rods ever so lightly where they come together. They snap out of line violently; you break a couple of knuckles. The resultant force is at right angles to the original forces you exerted. My power transmitter is on the same principle. It takes an infinitesimal amount of energy to throw those forces out of line. Easy enough when you know how to do it. The important question is whether or not you can control the resultant when you get it. I can."

"I – see." Conant indulged in a four-second gloat. "Heaven help the utility companies. I don’t intend to. Kidder – I want a full-size power transmitter."

Kidder clucked into the radiophone. "Ambitious, aren’t you? I haven’t a staff out here, Conant – you know that. And I can’t be expected to build four or five thousand tons of apparatus myself."

"I’ll have five hundred engineers and laborers out there in forty-eight hours."

"You will not. Why bother me with it? I’m quite happy here, Conant, and one of the reasons is that I’ve got no one to get in my hair."

"Oh, now, Kidder – don’t be like that – I’ll pay you—"

"You haven’t got that much money," said Kidder briskly. He flipped the switch on his set. His switch worked.

Conant was furious. He shouted into the phone several times, then began to lean on the signal button. On his island, Kidder let the thing squeal and went back to his projection room. He was sorry he had sent the diagram of the receiver to Conant. It would have been interesting to power a plane or a car with the model transmitter he had taken from the Neoterics. But if Conant was going to be that way about it – well, anyway, the receiver would be no good without the transmitter. Any radio engineer would understand the diagram, but not the beam which activated it. And Conant wouldn’t get his beam.

Pity he didn’t know Conant well enough.

Kidder’s days were endless sorties into learning. He never slept, nor did his Neoterics. He ate regularly every five hours, exercised for half an hour in every twelve. He did not keep track of time, for it meant nothing to him. Had he wanted to know the date, or the year, even, he knew he could get it from Conant. He didn’t care, that’s all. The time that was not spent in observation was used in developing new problems for the Neoterics. His thoughts just now ran to defense. The idea was born in his conversation with Conant; now the idea was primary, its motivation something of no importance. The Neoterics were working on a vibration field of quasi-electrical nature. Kidder could see little practical value in such a thing – an invisible wall which would kill any living thing which touched it. But still – the idea was intriguing.

He stretched and moved away from the telescope in the upper room through which he had been watching his creations at work. He was profoundly happy here in the large control room. Leaving it to go to the old laboratory for a bite to eat was a thing he hated, to do. He felt like bidding it good-by each time he walked across the compound, and saying a glad hello when he returned. A little amused at himself, he went out.

There was a black blob – a distant power boat – a few miles off the island, toward the mainland. Kidder stopped and stared distastefully at it. A white petal of spray was affixed to each side of the black body – it was coming toward him. He snorted, thinking of the time a yachtload of silly fools had landed out of curiosity one afternoon, spewed themselves over his beloved island, peppered him with lame-brained questions, and thrown his nervous equilibrium out for days. Lord, how he hated people!

The thought of unpleasantness bred two more thoughts that played half-consciously with his mind as he crossed the compound and entered the old laboratory. One was that perhaps it might be wise to surround his buildings with a field of force of some kind and post warnings for trespassers. The other thought was of Conant and the vague uneasiness the man had been sending to him through the radiophone these last weeks. His suggestion, two days ago, that a power plant be built on the island – horrible idea!

Conant rose from a laboratory bench as Kidder walked in.

They looked at each other wordlessly for a long moment Kidder hadn’t seen the bank president in years. The man’s presence, he found, made his scalp crawl. "Hello," said Conant genially. "You’re looking fit."

Kidder grunted. Conant eased his unwieldy body back onto the bench and said, "Just to save you the energy of asking questions, Mr. Kidder, I arrived two hours ago on, a small boat. Rotten way to travel. I wanted to be a surprise to you; my two men rowed me the last couple of miles. You’re not very well equipped here for defense, are you? Why, anyone could slip up on you the way I did."

"Who’d want to?" growled Kidder. The man’s voice edged annoyingly into his brain. He spoke too loudly for such a small room; at least, Kidder’s hermit’s ears felt that way. Kidder shrugged and went about preparing a light meal for himself.

"Well," drawled the banker. "I might want to." He drew out a Dow-metal cigar case. "Mind if I smoke?"

"I do," said Kidder sharply.

Conant laughed easily and put the cigars away. "I might," he said, "want to urge you to let me build that power station on this island."

"Radiophone work?"

"Oh, yes. But now that I’m here you can’t switch me off. Now – how about it?"

"I haven’t changed my mind."

"Oh, but you should, Kidder, you should. Think of it – think of the good it would do for the masses of people that are now paying exorbitant power bills!"

"I hate the masses! Why do you have to build here?"

"Oh, that. It’s an ideal location. You own the island; work could begin here without causing any comment whatsoever. The plant would spring full-fledged on the power markets of the country, having been built in secret. The island can be made impregnable."

"I don’t want to be bothered."

"We wouldn’t bother you. We’d build on the north end of the island – a mile and a quarter from you and your work. Ah – by the way – where’s the model of the power transmitter?"

Kidder, with his mouth full of synthesized food, waved a hand at a small table on which stood the model, a four-foot, amazingly intricate device of plastic and steel and tiny coils.

Conant rose and went over to look at it. "Actually works, eh?" He sighed deeply and said, "Kidder, I really hate to do this, but I want to build that plant rather badly.

"Carson! Robbins!"

Two bull-necked individuals stepped out from their hiding places in the corners of the room. One idly dangled a revolver by its trigger guard. Kidder looked blankly from one to the other of them.

"These gentlemen will follow my orders implicitly, Kidder. In half an hour a party will land here – engineers, contractors. They will start surveying the north end of the island for the construction of the power plant. These boys here feel about the same way I do as far as you are concerned. Do we proceed with your cooperation or without it? It’s immaterial to me whether or not you are left alive to continue your work. My engineers can duplicate your model."

Kidder said nothing. He had stopped chewing when he saw the gunmen, and only now remembered to swallow. He sat crouched over his plate without moving or speaking.

Conant broke the silence by walking to the door. "Robbins – can you carry that model there?" The big man put his gun away, lifted the model gently, and nodded. "Take it down to the beach and meet the other boat. Tell Mr. Johansen, the engineer, that this is the model he is to work from." Robbins went out. Conant turned to Kidder.

"There’s no need for us to anger ourselves," he said oilily. "I think you are stubborn, but I don’t hold it against you. I know how you feel. You’ll be left alone: you have my promise. But I mean to go ahead on this job, and a small thing like your life can’t stand in my way."

Kidder said, "Get out of here." There were two swollen veins throbbing at his temples. His voice was low, and it shook.

"Very well. Good day, Mr. Kidder. Oh – by the way – you’re a clever devil." No one had ever referred to the scholastic Mr. Kidder that way before. "I realize the possibility of your blasting us off the island. I wouldn’t do it if I were you. I’m willing to give you what you want – privacy. I want the same thing in return. If anything happens to me while I’m here, the island will be bombed by someone who is working for me; I’ll admit they might fail. If they do, the United States government will take a hand. You wouldn’t want that, would you? That’s rather a big thing for one man to fight. The same thing goes if the plant is sabotaged in any way after I go back to the mainland. You might be killed. You will most certainly be bothered interminably. Thanks for your… er… cooperation." The banker smirked and walked out, followed by his taciturn gorilla.

Kidder sat there for a long time without moving. Then he shook his head, rested it in his palms. He was badly frightened; not so much because his life was in danger, but because his privacy and his work – his world – were threatened. He was hurt and bewildered. He wasn’t a businessman. He couldn’t handle men. All his life he had run away from human beings and what they represented to him. He was like a frightened child when men closed in on him.

Cooling a little, he wondered vaguely what would happen when the power plant opened. Certainly, the government would be interested. Unless – unless by then Conant was the government. That plant was an unimaginable source of power, and not only the kind of power that turned wheels. He rose and went back to the world that was home to him, a world where his motives were understood, and where there were those who could help him.

Back at the Neoterics’ building, he escaped yet again from the world of men into his work.

Kidder called Conant the following week, much to the banker’s surprise. His two days on the island had got the work well under way, and he had left with the arrival of a shipload of laborers and material. He kept in close touch by radio with Johansen, the engineer in charge. It had been a blind job for Johansen and all the rest of the crew on the island. Only the bank’s infinite resources could have hired such a man, or the picked gang with him.

Johansen’s first reaction when he saw the model had been ecstatic. He wanted to tell his friends about this marvel; but the only radio set available was beamed to Conant’s private office in the bank, and Conant’s armed guards, one to every two workers, had strict orders to destroy any other radio transmitter on sight. About that time he realized that he was a prisoner on the island. His instant anger subsided when he reflected that being a prisoner at fifty thousand dollars a week wasn’t too bad. Two of the laborers and an engineer thought differently, and got disgruntled a couple of days after they arrived. They disappeared one night – the same night that five shots were fired down on the beach. No questions were asked, and there was no more trouble.

Conant covered his surprise at Kidder’s call and was as offensively jovial as ever. "Well, now! Anything I can do for you?"

"Yes," said Kidder. His voice was low, completely without expression. "I want you to issue a warning to your men not to pass the white line I have drawn five hundred yards north of my buildings, right across the island."

"Warning? Why, my dear fellow, they have orders that you are not to be disturbed on any account."

"You’ve ordered them. All right. Now warn them. I have an electric field surrounding my laboratories that will kill anything living which penetrates it. I don’t want to have murder on my conscience. There will be no deaths unless there are trespassers. You’ll inform your workers?"

"Oh, now, Kidder," the banker expostulated. "That was totally unnecessary. You won’t be bothered. Why—" but he found he was talking into a dead mike. He knew better than to call back. He called Johansen instead and told him about it.

Johansen didn’t like the sound of it, but he repeated the message and signed off. Conant liked that man. He was, for a moment, a little sorry that Johansen would never reach the mainland alive.

But that Kidder – he was beginning to be a problem. As long as his weapons were strictly defensive he was no real menace. But he would have to be taken care of when the plant was operating. Conant couldn’t afford to have genius around him unless it was unquestionably on his side. The power transmitter and Conant’s highly ambitious plans would be safe as long as Kidder was left to himself. Kidder knew that he could, for the time being, expect more sympathetic treatment from Conant than he could from a horde of government investigators.

Kidder only left his own enclosure once after the work began on the north end of the island, and it took all of his unskilled diplomacy to do it. Knowing the source of the plant’s power, knowing what could happen if it were misused, he asked Conant’s permission to inspect the great transmitter when it was nearly finished. Insuring his own life by refusing to report back to Conant until he was safe within his own laboratory again, he turned off his shield and walked up to the north end. He saw an awe-inspiring sight. The four-foot model was duplicated nearly a hundred times as large. Inside a massive three-hundred-foot tower a space was packed nearly solid with the same bewildering maze of coils and bars that the Neoterics had built so delicately into their machine. At the top was a globe of polished golden alloy, the transmitting antenna. From it would stream thousands of tight beams of force, which could be tapped to any degree by corresponding thousands of receivers placed anywhere at any distance. Kidder learned that the receivers had already been built, but his informant, Johansen, knew little about that end of it and was saying less. Kidder checked over every detail of the structure, and when he was through he shook Johansen’s hand admiringly.

"I didn’t want this thing here," he said shyly, "and I don’t. But I will say that it’s a pleasure to see this kind of work."

"It’s a pleasure to meet the man that invented it."

Kidder beamed. "I didn’t invent it," he said. "Maybe someday I’ll show you who did. I – well, good-bye." He turned before he had a chance to say too much and marched off down the path.

"Shall I?" said a voice at Johansen’s side. One of Conant’s guards had his gun out. Johansen knocked the man’s arm down. "No." He scratched his head. "So that’s the mysterious menace from the other end of the island. Eh! Why, he’s a hell of a nice little feller!"

Built on the ruins of Denver, which was destroyed in the great Battle of the Rockies during the Western War, stands the most beautiful city in the world – our nation’s capital, New Washington. In a circular room deep in the heart of the White House, the president, three army men and a civilian sat. Under the president’s desk a dictaphone unostentatiously recorded every word that was said. Two thousand and more miles away, Conant hung over a radio receiver, tuned to receive the signals of the tiny transmitter in the civilian’s side pocket.

One of the officers spoke.

"Mr. President, the ‘impossible claims’ made for this gentleman’s product are absolutely true. He has proved beyond doubt each item on his prospectus." The president glanced at the civilian, back at the officer. "I won’t wait for your report," he said. "Tell me – what happened?"

Another of the army men mopped his face with a khaki bandanna. "I can’t ask you to believe us, Mr. President, but it’s true all the same. Mr. Wright here has in his suitcase three or four dozen small… er… bombs—"

"They’re not bombs," said Wright casually.

"All right. They’re not bombs. Mr. Wright smashed two of them on an anvil with a sledge hammer. There was no result. He put two more in an electric furnace.They burned away like so much tin and cardboard. We dropped one down the barrel of a field piece and fired it. Still nothing." He paused and looked at the third officer, who picked up the account:

"We really got started then. We flew to the proving grounds, dropped one of the objects and flew to thirty thousand feet. From there, with a small hand detonator no bigger than your fist, Mr. Wright set the thing off. I’ve never seen anything like it. Forty acres of land came straight up at us, breaking up as it came. The concussion was terrific – you must have felt it here, four hundred miles away." The president nodded. "I did. Seismographs on the other side of the Earth picked it up."

"The crater it left was a quarter of a mile deep at the center. Why, one plane load of those things could demolish any city! There isn’t even any necessity for accuracy!"

"You haven’t heard anything yet," another officer broke in. "Mr. Wright’s automobile is powered by a small plant similar to the others. He demonstrated it to us. We could find no fuel tank of any kind, or any other driving mechanism. But with a power plant no bigger than six cubic inches, that car, carrying enough weight to give it traction, outpulled an army tank!"

"And the other test!" said the third excitedly. "He put one of the objects into a replica of a treasury vault. The walls were twelve feet thick, super-reinforced concrete. He controlled it from over a hundred yards away. He… he burst that vault! It wasn’t an explosion – it was as if some incredibly powerful expansive force inside filled it and flattened the walls from inside. They cracked and split and powdered, and the steel girders and rods came twisting and shearing out like… like – whew! After that he insisted on seeing you. We knew it wasn’t usual, but he said he has more to say and would say it only in your presence."

The president said gravely, "What is it, Mr. Wright?"

Wright rose, picked up his suitcase, opened it and took out a small cube, about eight inches on a side, made of some light-absorbent red material. Four men edged nervously away from it.

"These gentlemen," he began, "have seen only part of the things this device can do. I’m going to demonstrate to you the delicacy of control that is possible with it." He made an adjustment with a tiny knob on the side of the cube, set it on the edge of the president’s desk.

"You have asked me more than once if this is my invention or if I am representing someone. The latter is true. It might also interest you to know that the man who controls this cube is right now several thousand miles from here. He and he alone, can prevent it from detonating now that I—" He pulled his detonator out of the suitcase and pressed a button – "have done this. It will explode the way the one we dropped from the plane did, completely destroying this city and everything in it, in just four hours. It will also explode—" He stepped back and threw a tiny switch on his detonator—"if any moving object comes within three feet of it or if anyone leaves this room but me – it can be compensated for that. If, after I leave, I am molested, it will detonate as soon as a hand is laid on me. No bullets can kill me fast enough to prevent me from setting it off."

The three army men were silent. One of them swiped nervously at the beads of cold sweat on his forehead. The others did not move. The president said evenly: "What’s your proposition?"

"A very reasonable one. My employer does not work in the open, for obvious reasons. All he wants is your agreement to carry out his orders; to appoint the cabinet members he chooses, to throw your influence in any way he dictates. The public – Congress – anyone else – need never know anything about it. I might add that if you agree to this proposal, this ‘bomb,’ as you call it, will not go off.

"But you can be sure that thousands of them are planted all over the country. You will never know when you are near one. If you disobey, it beams instant annihilation for you and everyone else within three or four square miles.

"In three hours and fifty minutes – that will be at precisely seven o’clock – there is a commercial radio program on Station RPRS. You will cause the announcer, after his station identification, to say ‘Agreed.’ It will pass unnoticed by all but my employer. There is no use in having me followed; my work is done. I shall never see nor contact my employer again. That is all. Good afternoon, gentlemen!" Wright closed his suitcase with a businesslike snap, bowed, and left the room.

Four men sat staring at the little red cube.

"Do you think he can do all he says?" asked the president.

The three nodded mutely. The president reached for his phone.

There was an eavesdropper to all of the foregoing. Conant, squatting behind his great desk in the vault, where he had his sanctum sanctorum, knew nothing of it. But beside him was the compact bulk of Kidder’s radiophone. His presence switched it on, and Kidder, on his island, blessed the day he had thought of the device. He had been meaning to call Conant all morning, but was very hesitant. His meeting with the young engineer Johansen had impressed him strongly. The man was such a thorough scientist, possessed of such complete delight in the work he did, that for the first time in his life Kidder found himself actually wanting to see someone again. But he feared for Johansen’s life if he brought him to the laboratory, for Johansen’s work was done on the island, and Conant would most certainly have the engineer killed if he heard of his visit, fearing that Kidder would influence him to sabotage the great transmitter. And if Kidder went to the power plant he would probably be shot on sight.

All one day Kidder wrangled with himself, and finally determined to call Conant. Fortunately he gave no signal, but turned up the volume on the receiver when the little red light told him that Conant’s transmitter was functioning. Curious, he heard everything that occurred in the president’s chamber three thousand miles away. Horrified, he realized what Conant’s engineers had done. Built into tiny containers were tens of thousands of power receivers. They had no power of their own, but, by remote control, could draw on any or all of the billions of horsepower the huge plant on the island was broadcasting.

Kidder stood in front of his receiver, speechless. There was nothing he could do. If he devised some means of destroying the power plant, the government would certainly step in and take over the island, and then what would happen to him and his precious Neoterics?

Another sound grated out of the receiver – a commercial radio program. A few bars of music, a man’s voice advertising stratoline fares on the installment plan, a short silence, then:

"Station RPRS, voice of the nation’s Capital, District of South Colorado." The three-second pause was interminable.

"The time is exactly… er… agreed. The time is exactly seven P.M., Mountain Standard Time."

Then came a half-insane chuckle. Kidder had difficulty believing it was Conant. A phone clicked. The banker’s voice:

"Bill? All set. Get out there with your squadron and bomb up the island. Keep away from the plant, but cut the rest of it to ribbons. Do it quick and get out of there."

Almost hysterical with fear, Kidder rushed about the room and then shot out the door and across the compound. There were five hundred innocent workmen in barracks a quarter mile from the plant. Conant didn’t need them now, and he didn’t need Kidder. The only safety for anyone was in the plant itself, and Kidder wouldn’t leave his Neoterics to be bombed. He flung himself up the stairs and to the nearest teletype. He banged out, "Get me a defense. I want an impenetrable shield. Urgent!"

The words ripped out from under his fingers in the functional script of the Neoterics. Kidder didn’t think of what he wrote, didn’t really visualize the thing he ordered. But he had done what he could. He’d have to leave them now, get to the barracks; warn those men. He ran up the path toward the plant, flung himself over the white line that marked death to those who crossed it.

A squadron of nine clip-winged, mosquito-nosed planes rose out of cover on the mainland. There was no sound from the engines, for there were no engines. Each plane was powered with a tiny receiver and drew its unmarked, light-absorbent wings through the air with power from the island. In a matter of minutes they razed the island. The squadron leader spoke briskly into a microphone.

"Take the barracks first. Clean ’em up. Then work south."

Johansen was alone on a small hill near the center of the island. He carried a camera, and though he knew pretty well that his chances of ever getting ashore again were practically nonexistent, he liked angle shots of his tower, and took innumerable pictures. The first he knew of the planes was when he heard their whining dive over the barracks. He stood transfixed, saw a shower of bombs hurtle down and turn the barracks into a smashed ruin of broken wood, metal and bodies. The picture of Kidder’s earnest face flashed into his mind. Poor little guy – if they ever bombed his end of the island he would – But his tower! Were they going to bomb the plant?

He watched, utterly appalled, as the planes flew out to sea, cut back and dove again. They seemed to be working south. At the third dive he was sure of it. Not knowing what he could do, he nevertheless turned and ran toward Kidder’s place. He rounded a turn in the trail and collided violently with the little biochemist.

Kidder’s face was scarlet with exertion, and he was the most terrified-looking object Johansen had ever seen.

Kidder waved a hand northward. "Conant!" he screamed over the uproar. "It’s Conant! He’s going to kill us all!"

"The plant?" said Johansen, turning pale.

"It’s safe. He won’t touch that! But… my place… what about all those men?"

"Too late!" shouted Johansen.

"Maybe I can – Come on!" called Kidder, and was off down the trail, heading south. Johansen pounded after him. Kidder’s little short legs became a blur as the squadron swooped overhead, laying its eggs in the spot where they had met.

As they burst out of the woods, Johansen put on a spurt, caught up with the scientist and knocked him sprawling not six feet from the white line.

"Wh… wh—"

"Don’t go any farther, you fool! Your own damned force field – it’ll kill you!"

"Force field? But – I came through it on the way up – Here. Wait. If I can—" Kidder began hunting furiously about in the grass. In a few seconds he ran up to the line, clutching a large grasshopper in his hand. He tossed it over. It lay still.

"See?" said Johansen. "It—"

"Look! It jumped. Come on! I don’t know what went wrong, unless the Neoterics shut if off. They generated that field – I didn’t."

"Neo-huh?"

"Never mind," snapped the biochemist, and ran.

They pounded gasping up the steps and into the Neoterics’ control room. Kidder clapped his eyes to a telescope and shrieked in glee. "They’ve done it! They’ve done it!"

"My little people! The Neoterics! They’ve made the impenetrable shield! Don’t you see – it cut through the lines of force that start up the field out there. Their generator is still throwing it up, but the vibrations can’t get out! They’re safe! They’re safe!" And the overwrought hermit began to cry. Johansen looked at him pityingly and shook his head.

"Sure, your little men are all right. But we aren’t," he added as the floor shook to the detonation of a bomb.

Johansen closed his eyes, got a grip on himself and let his curiosity overcome his fear. He stepped to the binocular telescope, gazed down it. There was nothing there but a curved sheet of gray material. He had never seen a gray quite like that. It was absolutely neutral. It didn’t seem soft and it didn’t seem hard, and to look at it made his brain reel. He looked up.

Kidder was pounding the keys of a teletype, watching the blank yellow tape anxiously.

"I’m not getting through to them," he whimpered. "I don’t know. What’s the mat— Oh, of course!"

"What?"

"The shield is absolutely impenetrable! The teletype impulses can’t get through or I could get them to extend the screen over the building – over the whole island! There’s nothing those people can’t do!"

"He’s crazy," Johansen muttered. "Poor little—"

The teletype began clicking sharply. Kidder dove at it, practically embraced it. He read off the tape as it came out. Johansen saw the characters, but they meant nothing to him.

"Almighty," Kidder read falteringly, "pray have mercy on us and be forbearing until we have said our say. Without orders we have lowered the screen you ordered us to raise. We are lost, O great one. Our screen is truly impenetrable, and so cut off your words on the word machine. We have never, in the memory of any Neoteric, been without your word before. Forgive us our action. We will eagerly await your answer."

Kidder’s fingers danced over the keys. "You can look now," he gasped. "Go on – the telescope!"

Johansen, trying to ignore the whine of sure death from above, looked.

He saw what looked like land – fantastic fields under cultivation, a settlement of some sort, factories, and – beings. Everything moved with incredible rapidity. He couldn’t see one of the inhabitants except as darting pinky-white streaks.

Fascinated, he stared for a long minute. A sound behind him made him whirl. It was Kidder, rubbing his hands together briskly. There was a broad smile on his face.

"They did it," he said happily. "You see?"

Johansen didn’t see until he began to realize that there was a dead silence outside. He ran to a window. It was night outside – the blackest night – when it should have been dusk. "What happened?"

"The Neoterics," said Kidder, and laughed like a child. "My friends downstairs there. They threw up the impenetrable shield over the whole island. We can’t be touched now!"

And at Johansen’s amazed questions, he launched into a description of the race of beings below them.

Outside the shell, things happened. Nine airplanes suddenly went dead-stick. Nine pilots glided downward, powerless, and some fell into the sea, and some struck the miraculous gray shell that loomed in place of an island; slid off and sank.

And ashore, a man named Wright sat in a car, half dead with fear, while government men surrounded him, approached cautiously, daring instant death from a non-dead source.

In a room deep in the White House, a high-ranking army officer shrieked, "I can’t stand it any more! I can’t!" and leaped up, snatched a red cube off the president’s desk, ground it to ineffectual litter under his shining boots.

And in a few days they took a broken old man away from the bank and put him in an asylum, where he died within a week.

The shield, you see, was truly impenetrable. The power plant was untouched and sent out its beams; but the beams could not get out, and anything powered from the plant went dead. The story never became public, although for some years there was heightened naval activity off the New England coast. The navy, so the story went, had a new target range out there – a great hemi-ovoid of gray-material. They bombed it and shelled it and rayed it and blasted all around it, but never even dented its smooth surface.

Kidder and Johansen let it stay there. They were happy enough with their researches and their Neoterics. They did not hear or feel the shelling, for the shield was truly impenetrable. They synthesized their food and their light and air from materials at hand, and they simply didn’t care. They were the only survivors of the bombing, with the exception of three poor maimed devils who died soon afterward.

All this happened many years ago, and Kidder and Johansen may be alive today, and they may be dead. But that doesn’t matter too much. The important thing is that the great gray shell will bear watching. Men die, but races live. Some day the Neoterics, after innumerable generations of inconceivable advancement, will take down their shield and come forth. When I think of that I feel frightened.

ANCIENT ENGINES Michael Swanwick

"Planning to live forever, Tiktok?"

The words cut through the bar’s chatter and gab and silenced them.

The silence reached out to touch infmity, and then, "I believe you’re talking to me?" a mech said.

The drunk laughed. "Ain’t nobody else here sticking needles in his face, is there?"

The old man who saw it all. He lightly touched the hand of the young woman sitting with him and said, "Watch."

Carefully, the mech set down his syringe alongside a bottle of liquid collagen on a square of velvet cloth. He disconnected himself from the recharger, laying the jack beside the syringe. When he looked up again, his face was still and hard. He looked like a young lion.

The drunk grinned sneeringly.

The. bar was located just around the corner from the local stepping stage. It was a quiet retreat from the aggravations of the street, all brass and mirrors and wood paneling, as cozy and snug as the inside of a walnut. Light shifted lazily about the room, creating a varying emphasis, like clouds drifting overhead on a summer day, but far dimmer. The bar, the bottles behind the bar, and the shelves beneath the bottles behind the bar were all aggressively real. If there was anything virtual, it was set up high or far back, where it couldn’t be touched. There was not a smart surface in the place.

"If that was a challenge," the mech said, "I’d be more than happy to meet you outside."

"Oh, noooooo," the drunk said, his expression putting the lie to his words. "I just saw you shooting up that goop into your face, oh so dainty, like an old lady pumping herself full of antioxidants. So I figured…" he weaved and put a hand down on a table to steady himself. "… figured you was hoping to live forever."

The girl looked questioningly at the old man. He held a finger to his lips.

"Well, you’re right. You’re—what? Fifty years old? Just beginning to grow old and decay. Pretty soon your teeth will rot and fall out and your hair will melt away and your face will fold up in a million wrinkles. Your hearing and your eyesight will go and you won’t be able to remember the last time you got it up. You’ll be lucky if you don’t need diapers before the end. But me—" he drew a dram of fluid into his syringe and tapped the barrel to draw the bubbles to the top "—anything that fails, I’ll simply have it replaced. So, yes, I’m planning to live forever. While you, well, I suppose you’re planning to die. Soon, I hope."

The drunk’s face twisted, and with an incoherent roar of rage, he attacked the mech.

In a motion too fast to be seen, the mech stood, seized the drunk, whirled him around, and lifted him above his head. One hand was closed around the man’s throat so he couldn’t speak. The other held both wrists tight behind the knees so that, struggle as he might, the drunk was helpless.

"I could snap your spine like that," he said coldly. "If I exerted myself, I could rupture every internal organ you’ve got. I’m two-point-eight times stronger than a flesh man, and three-point-five times faster. My reflexes are only slightly slower than the speed of light, and I’ve just had a tune-up. You could hardly have chosen a worse person to pick a fight with."

Then the drunk was flipped around and set back on his feet. He gasped for air.

"But since I’m also a merciful man, I’ll simply ask you nicely if you wouldn’t rather leave." The mech spun the drunk around and gave him a gentle shove toward the door.

The man left at a stumbling run.

Everyone in the place—there were not many—had been watching. Now they remembered their drinks, and talk rose up to fill the room again. The bartender put something back under the bar and turned away.

Leaving his recharge incomplete, the mech folded up his lubrication kit and slipped it into a pocket. He swiped his hand over the credit swatch and stood.

But as he was leaving, the old man swiveled around and said, "I heard you say you hope to live forever. Is that true?"

"Who doesn’t?" the mech said curtly.

"Then sit down. Spend a few minutes out of the infinite swarm of centuries you’ve got ahead of you to humor an old man. What’s so urgent that you can’t spare the time?"

The mech hesitated. Then, as the young woman smiled at him, he sat.

"Thank you. My name is—"

"I know who you are, Mr. Brandt. There’s nothing wrong with my eidetics."

Brandt smiled. "That’s why I like you guys. I don’t have to be all the time reminding you of things." He gestured to the woman sitting opposite him. "My granddaughter." The light intensified where she sat, making her red hair blaze. She dimpled prettily.

"Jack." The young man drew up a chair. "Chimaera Navigator-Fuego, model number—"

"Please. I founded Chimaera. Do you think I wouldn’t recognize one of my own children?"

Jack flushed. "What is it you want to talk about, Mr. Brandt?" His voice was audibly less hostile now, as synthetic counterhormones damped down his emotions.

"Immortality. I found your ambition most intriguing."

"What’s to say? I take care of myself, I invest carefully, I buy all the upgrades. I see no reason why I shouldn’t live forever." Defiantly. "I hope that doesn’t offend you."

"No, no, of course not. Why should it? Some men hope to achieve immortality through their works and others through their children. What could give me more joy than to do both? But tell me—do you really expect to live forever?"

The mech said nothing.

"I remember an incident that happened to my late father-in-law, William Porter. He was a fine fellow, Bill was, and who remembers him anymore? Only me." The old man sighed. "He was a bit of a railroad buff, and one day he took a tour through a science museum that included a magnificent old steam locomotive. This was in the latter years of the last century. Well, he was listening admiringly to the guide extolling the virtues of this ancient engine when she mentioned its date of manufacture, and he realized that he was older than it was." Brandt leaned forward. "This is the point where old Bill would laugh. But it’s not really funny, is it?"

"No."

The granddaughter sat listening quietly, intently, eating little pretzels one by one from a bowl.

"How old are you, Jack?"

"Seven years."

"I’m eighty-three. How many machines do you know of that are as old as me? Eighty-three years old and still functioning?"

"I saw an automobile the other day," his granddaughter said. "A Dusenberg. It was red."

"How delightful. But it’s not used for transportation anymore, is it? We have the stepping stages for that. I won an award once that had mounted on it a vacuum tube from Univac. That was the first real computer. Yet all its fame and historical importance couldn’t keep it from the scrap heap."

"Univac," said the young man, "couldn’t act on its own behalf. If it could, perhaps it would be alive today."

"Parts wear out."

"New ones can be bought."

"Yes, as long as there’s the market. But there are only so many machine people of your make and model. A lot of you have risky occupations. There are accidents, and with every accident, the consumer market dwindles."

"You can buy antique parts. You can have them made."

"Yes, if you can afford them. And if not—?"

The young man fell silent.

"Son, you’re not going to live forever. We’ve just established that. So now that you’ve admitted that you’ve got to die someday, you might as well admit that it’s going to be sooner rather than later. Mechanical people are in their infancy. And nobody can upgrade a Model T into a stepping stage. Agreed?"

Jack dipped his head. "Yes."

"You knew it all along."

"Yes."

"That’s why you behaved so badly toward that lush."

"Yes."

"I’m going to be brutal here, Jack—you probably won’t live to be eighty-three. You don’t have my advantages."

"Which are?"

"Good genes. I chose my ancestors well."

"Good genes," Jack said bitterly. "You received good genes, and what did I get in their place? What the hell did I get?"

"Molybdenum joints where stainless steel would do. Ruby chips instead of zirconium. A number seventeen plastic seating for—hell, we did all right by you boys!"

"But it’s not enough."

"No. It’s not. It was only the best we could do."

"What’s the solution, then?" the granddaughter asked, smiling.

"I’d advise taking the long view. That’s what I’ve done."

"Poppycock," the mech said. "You were an extensionist when you were young. I input your autobiography. It seems to me you wanted immortality as much as I do."

"Oh, yes, I was a charter member of the life-extension movement. You can’t imagine the crap we put into our bodies! But eventually I wised up. The problem is, information degrades each time a human cell replenishes itself. Death is inherent in flesh people. It seems to be written into the basic program—a way, perhaps, of keeping the universe from filling up with old people."

"And old ideas," his granddaughter said maliciously.

"Touché. I saw that life-extension was a failure. So I decided that my children would succeed where I failed. That you would succeed. And—"

"You failed."

"But I haven’t stopped trying!" The old man thumped the table in unison with his last three words. "You’ve obviously given this some thought. Let’s discuss what I should have done. What would it take to make a true immortal? What instructions should I have given your design team? Let’s design a mechanical man who’s got a shot at living forever."

Carefully, the mech said, "Well, the obvious to begin with. He ought to be able to buy new parts and upgrades as they become available. There should be ports and connectors that would make it easy to adjust to shifts in technology. He should be capable of surviving extremes of heat, cold, and moisture. And—" he waved a hand at his own face "—he shouldn’t look so goddamned pretty."

"I think you look nice," the granddaughter said.

"Yes, but I’d like to be able to pass for flesh."

"So our hypothetical immortal should be one, infinitely upgradable; two, adaptable across a broad spectrum of conditions; and three, discreet. Anything else?"

"I think she should be charming," the granddaughter said.

"She?" the mech asked.

"Why not?"

"That’s actually not a bad point," the old man said. "The organism that survives evolutionary forces is the one that’s best adapted to its environmental niche. The environmental niche people live in is man-made. The single most useful trait a survivor can have is probably the ability to get along easily with other men. Or, if you’d rather, women."

"Oh," said the granddaughter, "he doesn’t like women. I can tell by his body language."

The young man flushed.

"Don’t be offended," said the old man. "You should never be offended by the truth. As for you—" he turned to face his granddaughter "—if you don’t learn to treat people better, I won’t take you places anymore."

She dipped her head. "Sorry."

"Apology accepted. Let’s get back to task, shall we? Our hypothetical immortal would be a lot like flesh women, in many ways. Self-regenerating. Able to grow her own replacement parts. She could take in pretty much anything as fuel. A little carbon, a little water…"

"Alcohol would be an excellent fuel," his granddaughter said.

"She’d have the ability to mimic the superficial effects of aging," the mech said. "Also, biological life evolves incrementally across generations. I’d want her to be able to evolve across upgrades."

"Fair enough. Only I’d do away with upgrades entirely, and give her total conscious control over her body. So she could change and evolve at will. She’ll need that ability, if she’s going to survive the collapse of civilization."

"The collapse of civilization? Do you think it likely?"

"In the long run? Of course. When you take the long view, it seems inevitable. Everything seems inevitable. Forever is a long time, remember. Time enough for absolutely everything to happen!"

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then the old man slapped his hands together. "Well, we’ve created our New Eve. Now let’s wind her up and let her go. She can expect to live—how long?"

"Forever," said the mech.

"Forever’s a long time. Let’s break it down into smaller units. In the year 2500, she’ll be doing what?"

"Holding down a job," the granddaughter said. "Designing art molecules, maybe, or scripting recreational hallucinations. She’ll be deeply involved in the culture. She’ll have lots of friends she cares about passionately, and maybe a husband or wife or two."

"Who will grow old," the mech said, "or wear out. Who will die."

"She’ll mourn them, and move on."

"The year 3500. The collapse of civilization," the old man said with gusto. "What will she do then?"

"She’ll have made preparations, of course. If there is radiation or toxins in the environment, she’ll have made her systems immune from their effects. And she’ll make herself useful to the survivors. In the seeming of an old woman, she’ll teach the healing arts. Now and then, she might drop a hint about this and that. She’ll have a data base squirreled away somewhere containing everything they’ll have lost. Slowly, she’ll guide them back to civilization. But a gentler one, this time. One less likely to tear itself apart."

"The year one million. Humanity evolves beyond anything we can currently imagine. How does she respond?"

"She mimics their evolution. No—she’s been shaping their evolution! She wants a risk-free method of going to the stars, so she’s been encouraging a type of being that would strongly desire such a thing. She isn’t among the first to use it, though. She waits a few hundred generations for it to prove itself."

The mech, who had been listening in fascinated silence, now said, "Suppose that never happens. What if starflight will always remain difficult and perilous? What then?"

"It was once thought that people would never fly. So much that looks impossible becomes simple if you only wait."

"Four billion years. The sun uses up its hydrogen, its core collapses, helium fusion begins, and it balloons into a red giant. Earth is vaporized."

"Oh, she’ll be somewhere else by then. That’s easy."

"Five billion years. The Milky Way collides with the Andromeda Galaxy and the whole neighborhood is full of high-energy radiation and exploding stars."

"That’s trickier. She’s going to have to either prevent that or move a few million light-years away to a friendlier galaxy. But she’ll have time enough to prepare and to assemble the tools. I have faith that she’ll prove equal to the task."

"One trillion years. The last stars gutter out. Only black holes remain."

"Black holes are a terrific source of energy. No problem."

"One-point-six googol years."

"Googol?"

"That’s ten raised to the hundredth power—one followed by a hundred zeros. The heat-death of the universe. How does she survive it?"

"She’ll have seen it coming for a long time," the mech said. "When the last black holes dissolve, she’ll have to do without a source of free energy. Maybe she could take and rewrite her personality into the physical constants of the dying universe. Would that be possible?"

"Oh, perhaps. But I really think that the lifetime of the universe is long enough for anyone," the granddaughter said. "Mustn’t get greedy."

"Maybe so," the old man said thoughtfully. "Maybe so." Then, to the mech, "Well, there you have it: a glimpse into the future, and a brief biography of the first immortal, ending, alas, with her death. Now tell me. Knowing that you contributed something, however small, to that accomplishment—wouldn’t that be enough?"

"No," Jack said. "No, it wouldn’t."

Brandt made a face. "Well, you’re young. Let me ask you this: Has it been a good life so far? All in all?"

"Not that good. Not good enough."

For a long moment, the old man was silent. Then, "Thank you," he said. "I valued our conversation." The interest went out of his eyes and he looked away.

Uncertainly, Jack looked at the granddaughter, who smiled and shrugged. "He’s like that," she said apologetically. "He’s old. His enthusiasms wax and wane with his chemical balances. I hope you don’t mind."

"I see." The young man stood. Hesitantly, he made his way to the door.

At the door, he glanced back and saw the granddaughter tearing her linen napkin into little bits and eating the shreds, delicately washing them down with sips of wine.

BEACHCOMBER Mike Resnick

Arlo didn’t look much like a man. (Not all robots do, you know.) The problem was that he didn’t act all that much like a robot.

The fact of the matter is that one day, right in the middle of work, he decided to pack it in. Just got up, walked out the door, and kept on going. Somebody must have seen him; it’s pretty hard to hide nine hundred pounds of moving parts. But evidently nobody knew it was Arlo. After all, he hadn’t left his desk since the day they’d activated him twelve years ago.

So the Company got in touch with me, which is a euphemistic way of saying that they woke me in the middle of the night, gave me three minutes to get dressed, and rushed me to the office. I can’t really say that I blame them: when you need a scapegoat, the Chief of Security is a pretty handy guy to have around.

Anyway, it was panic time. It seems that no robot ever ran away before. And Arlo wasn’t just any robot: he was a twelve million dollar item, with just about every feature a machine could have short of white-walled tires. And I wasn’t even so certain about the tires; he sure dropped out of sight fast enough.

So, after groveling a little and making all kinds of optimistic promises to the Board, I started doing a little checking up on Arlo. I went to his designer, and his department head, and even spoke to some of his co-workers, both human and robot.

And it turned out that what Arlo did was sell tickets. That didn’t sound like twelve million dollars’ worth of robot to me, but I was soon shown the error of my ways. Arlo was a travel agent supreme. He booked tours of the Solar System, got his people into and out of luxury hotels on Ganymede and Titan and the Moon, scheduled their weight and their time to the nearest gram and the nearest second.

It still didn’t sound that impressive. Computers were doing stuff like that long before robots ever crawled out of the pages of pulp magazines and into our lives.

"True," said his department head. "But Arlo was a robot with a difference. He booked more tours and arranged more complicated logistical scheduling than any other ten robots put together."

"More complex thinking gear?" I asked.

"Well, that too," was the answer. "But we did a little something else with Arlo that had never been done before."

"And what was that?"

"We programmed him for enthusiasm."

"That’s something special?" I asked.

"Absolutely. When Arlo spoke about the beauties of Callisto, or the fantastic light refraction images on Venus, he did so with a conviction that was so intense as to be almost tangible. Even his voice reflected his enthusiasm. He was one of those rare robots who was capable of modular inflection, rather than the dull, mechanistic monotone so many of them possess. He literally loved those desolate worlds, and his record will show that his attitude was infectious."

I thought about that for a minute. "So you’re telling me that you’ve created a robot whose entire motivation had been to send people out to sample all these worlds, and he’s been crated up in an office twenty-four hours a day since the second you plugged him in?"

"That’s correct."

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe he wanted to see some of these sights himself?"

"It’s entirely possible that he did, but leaving his post would be contrary to his orders."

"Yeah," I said. "Well, sometimes a little enthusiasm can go a long way."

He denied it vigorously, and I spent just enough time in his office to mollify him. Then I left and got down to work. I checked every outgoing space flight, and had some of the Company’s field reps hit the more luxurious vacation spas. He wasn’t there.

So I tried a little closer to home: Monte Carlo, New Vegas, Alpine City. No luck. I even tried a couple of local theaters that specialized in Tri-Fi travelogs.

You know where I finally found him?

Stuck in the sand at Coney Island. I guess he’d been walking along the beach at night and the tide had come in and he just sank in, all nine hundred pounds of him. Some kids had painted some obscene graffiti on his back, and there he stood, surrounded by empty beer cans and broken glass and a few dead fish. I looked at him for a minute, then shook my head and walked over.

"I knew you’d find me sooner or later," he said, and even though I knew what to expect, I still did a double-take at the sound of that horribly unhappy voice coming from this enormous mass of gears and gadgetry.

"Well, you’ve got to admit that it’s not too hard to spot a robot on a condemned beach," I said.

"I suppose I have to go back now," said Arlo.

"That’s right," I said.

"At least I’ve felt the sand beneath my feet," said Arlo.

"Arlo, you don’t have any feet," I said. "And if you did, you couldn’t feel sand beneath them. Besides, it’s just silicon and crushed limestone and…"

"It’s sand and it’s beautiful!" snapped Arlo.

"All right, have it your way: it’s beautiful." I knelt down next to him and began digging the sand away.

"Look at the sunrise," he said in a wistful voice. "It’s glorious!"

I looked. A sunrise is a sunrise. Big deal.

"It’s enough to bring tears of joy to your eyes," said Arlo.

"You don’t have eyes," I said, working at the sand. "You’ve got prismatic photo cells that transmit an image to your central processing unit. And you can’t cry, either. If I were you, I’d be more worried about rusting."

"A pastel wonderland," he said, turning what passed for his head and looking up and down the deserted beach, past the rotted food stands and the broken piers. "Glorious!"

It kind of makes you wonder about robots. I’ll tell you. Anyway, I finally pried him loose and ordered him to follow me.

"Please," he said in that damned voice of his. "Couldn’t I have one last minute before you lock me up in my office?"

I stared at him, trying to make up my mind.

"One last look. Please?"

I shrugged, gave him about thirty seconds, and then took him in tow.

"You know what’s going to happen to you, don’t you?" I said as we rode back to the office.

"Yes," he said. "They’re going to put in a stronger duty directive, aren’t they?"

I nodded. "At the very least."

"My memory banks!" he exclaimed, and once again I jumped at the sound of a human voice coming from an animated gearbox. "They won’t take this experience away from me, will they?"

"I don’t know, Arlo," I said.

"They can’t!" he wailed. "To see such beauty, and then have it expunged—erased!"

"Well, they may want to make sure you don’t go AWOL again," I said, wondering what kind of crazy junkheap could find anything beautiful on a garbage-laden strip of dirt.

"Can you intercede for me if I promise never to leave again?"

Any robot that can disobey one directive can disobey others, like not roughing up human beings, and Arlo was a pretty powerful piece of machinery, so I put on my most fatherly smile and said: "Sure I will, Arlo. You can count on it."

So I returned him to the Company, and they upped his sense of duty and took away his enthusiasm and gave him a case of agoraphobia and wiped his memory banks clean, and now he sits in his office and speaks to customers without inflection, and sells a few less tickets than he used to.

And every couple of months or so I wander over to the beach and walk along it and try to see what it was that made Arlo sacrifice his personality and his security and damned near everything else, just to get a glimpse of all this.

And I see a sunset just like any other sunset, and a stretch of dirty sand with glass and tin cans and seaweed and rocks on it, and I breathe in polluted air, and sometimes I get rained on; and I think of that damned robot in that plush office with that cushy job and every need catered to, and I decide that I’d trade places with him in two seconds flat.

I saw Arlo just the other day—I had some business on his floor—and it was almost kind of sad. He looked just like any other robot, spoke in a grating monotone, acted exactly like an animated computer. He wasn’t much before, but whatever he had been, he gave it all away just to look at the sky once or twice. Dumb trade.

Well, robots never did make much sense to me, anyway.

NON SERVIAM Stanisław Lem

Professor Dobb’s book is devoted to personetics, which the Finnish philosopher Eino Kaikki has called "the cruelest science man ever created." Dobb, one of the most distinguished personeticists today, shares this view. One cannot escape the conclusion, he says, that personetics is, in its application, immoral; we are dealing, however, with a type of pursuit that is, though counter to the principles of ethics, also of practical necessity to us. There is no way, in the research, to avoid its special ruthlessness, to avoid doing violence to one’s natural instincts, and if nowhere else it is here that the myth of the perfect innocence of the scientist as a seeker of facts is exploded. We are speaking of a discipline, after all, which, with only a small amount of exaggeration, for emphasis, has been called "experimental theogony." Even so, this reviewer is struck by the fact that when the press played up the thing, nine years ago, public opinion was stunned by the personetic disclosures. One would have thought that in this day and age nothing could surprise us. The centuries rang with the echo of the feat of Columbus, whereas the conquering of the Moon in the space of a week was received by the collective consciousness as a thing practically humdrum. And yet the birth of personetics proved to be a shock.

The name combines Latin and Greek derivatives: "persona" and "genetic"—"genetic" in the sense of formation, or creation. The field is a recent offshoot of the cybernetics and psychonics of the eighties, crossbred with applied intellectronics. Today everyone knows of personetics; the man in the street would say, if asked, that it is the artificial production of intelligent beings—an answer not wide of the mark, to be sure, but not quite getting to the heart of the matter. To date we have nearly a hundred personetic programs. Nine years ago identity schemata were being developed—primitive cores of the "linear" type—but even that generation of computers, today of historical value only, could not yet provide a field for the true creation of personoids.

The theoretical possibility of creating sentience was divined some time ago, by Norbert Wiener, as certain passages of his last book, God and Golem, bear witness. Granted, he alluded to it in that half-facetious manner typical of him, but underlying the facetiousness were fairly grim premonitions. Wiener, however, could not have foreseen the turn that things would take twenty years later. The worst came about—in the words of Sir Donald Acker—when at MIT "the inputs were shorted to the outputs."

At present a "world" for personoid "inhabitants" can be prepared in a matter of a couple of hours. This is the time it takes to feed into the machine one of the full-fledged programs (such as BAAL 66, CREAN IV, or JAHVE 09). Dobb gives a rather cursory sketch of the beginnings of personetics, referring the reader to the historical sources; a confirmed practitioner-experimenter himself, he speaks mainly of his own work—which is much to the point, since between the English school, which Dobb represents, and the American group, at MIT, the differences are considerable, both in the area of methodology and as regards experimental goals. Dobb describes the procedure of "6 days in 120 minutes" as follows. First, one supplies the machine’s memory with a minimal set of givens; that is—to keep within a language comprehensible to laymen—one loads its memory with substance that is "mathematical." This substance is the protoplasm of a universum to be "habitated" by personoids. We are now able to supply the beings that will come into this mechanical, digital world—that will be carrying on an existence in it, and in it only—with an environment of nonfinite characteristics. These beings, therefore, cannot feel imprisoned in the physical sense, because the environment does not have, from their standpoint, any bounds. The medium possesses only one dimension that resembles a dimension given us also—namely, that of the passage of time (duration). Their time is not directly analogous to ours, however, because the rate of its flow is subject to discretionary control on the part of the experimenter. As a rule, the rate is maximized in the preliminary phase (the so-called creational warm-up), so that our minutes correspond to whole eons in the computer, during which there takes place a series of successive reorganizations and crystallizations—of a synthetic cosmos. It is a cosmos completely spaceless, though possessing dimensions, but these dimensions have a purely mathematical, hence what one might call an "imaginary" character. They are, very simply, the consequence of certain axiomatic decisions of the programmer, and their number depends on him. If, for example, he chooses a ten-dimensionality, it will have for the structure of the world created altogether different consequences from those where only six dimensions are established. It should be emphasized that these dimensions bear no relation to those of physical space but only to the abstract, logically valid constructs made use of in systems creation.

This point, all but inaccessible to the nonmathematician, Dobb attempts to explain by adducing simple facts, the sort generally learned in school. It is possible, as we know, to construct a geometrically regular three-dimensional solid—say, a cube—which in the real world possesses a counterpart in the form of a die; and it is equally possible to create geometrical solids of four, five, n dimensions (the four-dimensional is a tesseract). These no longer possess real counterparts, and we can see this, since in the absence of any physical dimension No. 4 there is no way to fashion genuine four-dimensional dice. Now, this distinction (between what is physically constructible and what may be made only mathematically) is, for personoids, in general nonexistent, because their world is of a purely mathematical consistency. It is built of mathematics, though the building blocks of that mathematics are ordinary, perfectly physical objects (relays, transistors, logic circuits—in a word, the whole huge network of the digital machine).

As we know from modern physics, space is not something independent of the objects and masses that are situated within it. Space is, in its existence, determined by those bodies; where they are not, where nothing is—in the material sense—there, too, space ceases, collapsing to zero. Now, the role of material bodies, which extend their "influence," so to speak, and thereby "generate" space, is carried out in the personoid world by systems of a mathematics called into being for that very purpose. Out of all the possible "maths" that in general might be made (for example, in an axiomatic manner), the programmer, having decided upon a specific experiment, selects a particular group, which will serve as the underpinning, the "existential substrate," the "ontological foundation" of the created universum. There is in this, Dobb believes, a striking similarity to the human world. This world of ours, after all, has "decided" upon certain forms and upon certain types of geometry that best suit it—best, since most simply (three-dimensionality, in order to remain with what one began with). This notwithstanding, we are able to picture "other worlds" with "other properties"—in the geometrical and not only in the geometrical realm. It is the same with the personoids: that aspect of mathematics which the researcher has chosen as the "habitat" is for them exactly what for us is the "real-world base" in which we live, and live perforce. And, like us, the personoids are able to "picture" worlds of different fundamental properties.

Dobb presents his subject using the method of successive approximations and recapitulations; that which we have outlined above, and which corresponds roughly to the first two chapters of his book, in the subsequent chapters undergoes partial revocation—through complication. It is not really the case, the author advises us, that the personoids simply come upon a readymade, fixed, frozen sort of world in its irrevocably final form; what the world will be like in its specificities depends on them, and this to a growing degree as their own activeness increases, as their "exploratory initiative" develops. Nor does the likening of the universum of the personoids to a world in which phenomena exist only to the extent that its inhabitants observe them provide an accurate image of the conditions. Such a comparison, which is to be found in the works of Sainter and Hughes, Dobb considers an "idealist deviation"—a homage that personetics has rendered to the doctrine, so curiously and so suddenly resurrected, of Bishop Berkeley. Sainter maintained that the personoids would know their world after the fashion of a Berkeleyan being, which is not in a position to distinguish "esse" from "percipi"—to wit, it will never discover the difference between the thing perceived and that which occasions the perception in a way objective and independent of the one perceiving. Dobb attacks this interpretation of the matter with a passion. We, the creators of their world, know perfectly well that what is perceived by them indeed exists; it exists inside the computer, independent of them—though, granted, solely in the manner of mathematical objects.

And there are further clarifications. The personoids arise germinally by virtue of the program; they increase at a rate imposed by the experimenter—a rate only such as the latest technology of information processing, operating at near-light speeds, permits. The mathematics that is to be the "existential residence" of the personoids does not await them in full readiness but is still "in wraps," so to speak—unarticulated, suspended, latent—because it represents only a set of certain prospective chances, of certain pathways contained in appropriately programmed subunits of the machine. These subunits, or generators, in and of themselves contribute nothing; rather, a specific type of personoid activity serves as a triggering mechanism, setting in motion a production process that will gradually augment and define itself; in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocalness only in accordance with their own behavior. Dobb tries to illustrate this concept with recourse to the following analogy. A man may interpret the real world in a variety of ways. He may devote particular attention—intense scientific investigation—to certain facets of that world, and the knowledge he acquires then casts its own special light on the remaining portions of the world, those not considered in his priority-setting research. If first he diligently takes up mechanics, he will fashion for himself a mechanical model of the world and will see the Universe as a gigantic and perfect clock that in its inexorable movement proceeds from the past to a precisely determined future. This model is not an accurate representation of reality, and yet one can make use of it for a period of time historically long, and with it can even achieve many practical successes—the building of machines, implements, etc. Similarly, should the personoids "incline themselves," by choice, by an act of will, to a certain type of relation to their universum, and to that type of relation give precedence—if it is in this and only in this that they find the "essence" of their cosmos—they will enter upon a definite path of endeavors and discoveries, a path that is neither illusory nor futile. Their inclination "draws out" of the environment what best corresponds to it. What they first perceive is what they first master. For the world that surrounds them is only partially determined, only partially established in advance by the researcher-creator; in it, the personoids preserve a certain and by no means insignificant margin of freedom of action—action both "mental" (in the province of what they think of their own world, of how they understand it) and "real" (in the context of their "deeds"—which are not, to be sure, literally real, as we understand the term, but are not merely imagined, either). This is, in truth, the most difficult part of the exposition, and Dobb, we daresay, is not altogether successful in explaining those special qualities of personoid existence—qualities that can be rendered only by the language of the mathematics of programs and creational interventions. We must, then, take it somewhat on faith that the activity of the personoids is neither entirely free—as the space of our actions is not entirely free, being limited by the physical laws of nature—nor entirely determined—just as we are not train cars set on rigidly fixed tracks. A personoid is similar to a man in this respect, too, that man’s "secondary qualities"—colors, melodious sounds, the beauty of things—can manifest themselves only when he has ears to hear and eyes to see, but what makes possible hearing and sight has been, after all, previously given. Personoids, perceiving their environment, give it from out of themselves those experiential qualities which exactly correspond to what for us are the charms of a beheld landscape—except, of course, that they have been provided with purely mathematical scenery. As to "how they see it," one can make no pronouncement, for the only way of learning the "subjective quality of their sensation" would be for one to shed his human skin and become a personoid. Personoids, one must remember, have no eyes or ears, therefore they neither see nor hear, as we understand it; in their cosmos there is no light, no darkness, no spatial proximity, no distance, no up or down; there are dimensions there, not tangible to us but to them primary, elemental; they perceive, for example—as equivalents of the components of human sensory awareness—certain changes in electrical potential. But these changes in potential are, for them, not something in the nature of, let us say, pressures of current but, rather, the sort of thing that, for a man, is the most rudimentary phenomenon, optical or aural—the seeing of a red blotch, the hearing of a sound, the touching of an object hard or soft. From here on, Dobb stresses, one can speak only in analogies, evocations.

To declare that the personoids are "handicapped" with respect to us, inasmuch as they do not see or hear as we do, is totally absurd, because with equal justice one could assert that it is we who are deprived with respect to them—unable to feel with immediacy the phenomenalism of mathematics, which, after all, we know only in a cerebral, inferential fashion. It is only through reasoning that we are in touch with mathematics, only through abstract thought that we "experience" it. Whereas the personoids live in it; it is their air, their earth, clouds, water, and even bread—yes, even food, because in a certain sense they take nourishment from it. And so they are "imprisoned," hermetically locked inside the machine, solely from our point of view; just as they cannot work their way out to us, to the human world, so, conversely—and symmetrically—a man can in no wise enter the interior of their world, so as to exist in it and know it directly. Mathematics has become, then, in certain of its embodiments, the life-space of an intelligence so spiritualized as to be totally incorporeal, the niche and cradle of its existence, its element.

The personoids are in many respects similar to man. They are able to imagine a particular contradiction (that a is and that not-a is) but cannot bring about its realization, just as we cannot. The physics of our world, the logic of theirs, does not allow it, since logic is for the personoids’ universum the very same action-confining frame that physics is for our world. In any case—emphasizes Dobb—it is quite out of the question that we could ever fully, introspectively grasp what the personoids "feel" and what they "experience" as they go about their intensive tasks in their nonfinite universum. Its utter spacelessness is no prison—that is a piece of nonsense the journalists latched onto—but is, on the contrary, the guarantee of their freedom, because the mathematics that is spun by the computer generators when "excited" into activity (and what excites them thus is precisely the activity of the personoids)—that mathematics is, as it were, a self-realizing infinite field for optional actions, architectural and other labors, for exploration, heroic excursions, daring incursions, surmises. In a word: we have done the personoids no injustice by putting them in possession of precisely such and not a different cosmos. It is not in this that one finds the cruelty, the immorality of personetics.

In the seventh chapter of Non Serviam Dobb presents to the reader the inhabitants of the digital universum. The personoids have at their disposal a fluency of thought as well as of language, and they also have emotions. Each of them is an individual entity; their differentiation is not the mere consequence of the decisions of the creator-programmer but results from the extraordinary complexity of their internal structure. They can be very like, one to another, but never are they identical. Coming into the world, each is endowed with a "core," a "personal nucleus," and already possesses the faculty of speech and thought, albeit in a rudimentary state. They have a vocabulary, but it is quite spare, and they have the ability to construct sentences in accordance with the rules of the syntax imposed upon them. It appears that in the future it will be possible for us not to impose upon them even these determinants, but to sit back and wait until, like a primeval human group in the course of socialization, they develop their own speech. But this direction of personetics confronts two cardinal obstacles. In the first place, the time required to await the creation of speech would have to be very long. At present, it would take twelve years, even with the maximization of the rate of intracomputer transformations (speaking figuratively and very roughly, one second of machine time corresponds to one year of human life). Secondly, and this is the greater problem, a language arising spontaneously in the "group evolution of the personoids" would be incomprehensible to us, and its fathoming would be bound to resemble the arduous task of breaking an enigmatic code—a task made all the more difficult by the fact that such a code would not have been created by people for other people in a world shared by the decoders. The world of the personoids is vastly different in qualities from ours, and therefore a language suited to it would have to be far removed from any ethnic language. So, for the time being, linguistic evolution ex nihilo is only a dream of the personeticists.

The personoids, when they have "taken root developmentally," come up against an enigma that is fundamental, and for them paramount—that of their own origin. To wit, they set themselves questions—questions known to us from the history of man, from the history of his religious beliefs, philosophical inquiries, and mythic creations: Where did we come from? Why are we made thus and not otherwise? Why is it that the world we perceive has these and not other, wholly different properties? What meaning do we have for the world? What meaning does it have for us? The train of such speculations leads them ultimately, unavoidably, to the elemental questions of ontology, to the problem of whether existence came about "in and of itself," or whether it was the product, instead, of a particular creative act—that is, whether there might not be, hidden behind it, invested with will and consciousness, purposively active, master of the situation, a Creator. It is here that the whole cruelty, the immorality of personetics manifests itself.

But before Dobb takes up, in the second half of his work, the account of these intellectual strivings—these struggles of a mentality made prey to the torment of such questions—he presents in a series of successive chapters a portrait of the "typical personoid," its "anatomy, physiology, and psychology."

A solitary personoid is unable to go beyond the stage of rudimentary thinking, since, solitary, it cannot exercise itself in speech, and without speech discursive thought cannot develop. As hundreds of experiments have shown, groups numbering from four to seven personoids are optimal, at least for the development of speech and typical exploratory activity, and also for "culturization." On the other hand, phenomena corresponding to social processes on a larger scale require larger groups. At present it is possible to "accommodate" up to one thousand personoids, roughly speaking, in a computer universum of fair capacity; but studies of this type, belonging to a separate and independent discipline—sociodynamics—lie outside the area of Dobb’s primary concerns, and for this reason his book makes only passing mention of them. As was said, a personoid does not have a body, but it does have a "soul." This soul—to an outside observer who has a view into the machine world (by means of a special installation, an auxiliary module that is a type of probe, built into the computer)—appears as a "coherent cloud of processes," as a functional aggregate with a kind of "center" that can be isolated fairly precisely, i.e., delimited within the machine network. (This, nota bene, is not easy, and in more than one way resembles the search by neurophysiologists for the localized centers of many functions in the human brain.) Crucial to an understanding of what makes possible the creation of the personoids is Chapter 11 of Non Serviam, which in fairly simple terms explains the fundamentals of the theory of consciousness. Consciousness—all consciousness, not merely the personoid—is in its physical aspect an "informational standing wave," a certain dynamic invariant in a stream of incessant transformations, peculiar in that it represents a "compromise" and at the same time is a "resultant" that, as far as we can tell, was not at all planned for by natural evolution. Quite the contrary; evolution from the first placed tremendous problems and difficulties in the way of the harmonizing of the work of brains above a certain magnitude—i.e., above a certain level of complication—and it trespassed on the territory of these dilemmas clearly without design, for evolution is not a deliberate artificer. It happened, simply, that certain very old evolutionary solutions to problems of control and regulation, common to the nervous system, were "carried along" up to the level at which anthropogenesis began. These solutions ought to have been, from a purely rational, efficiency-engineering standpoint, canceled or abandoned, and something entirely new designed—namely, the brain of an intelligent being. But, obviously, evolution could not proceed in this way, because disencumbering itself of the inheritance of old solutions—solutions often as much as hundreds of millions of years old—did not lie within its power. Since it advances always in very minute increments of adaptation, since it "crawls" and cannot "leap," evolution is a dragnet "that lugs after it innumerable archaisms, all sorts of refuse," as was bluntly put by Tammer and Bovine. (Tammer and Bovine are two of the creators of the computer simulation of the human psyche, a simulation that laid the groundwork for the birth of personetics.) The consciousness of man is the result of a special kind of compromise. It is a "patchwork," or, as was observed, e.g., by Gebhardt, a perfect exemplification of the well-known German saying: "Aus einer Not eine Tugend machen" (in effect: "To turn a certain defect, a certain difficulty, into a virtue"). A digital machine cannot of itself ever acquire consciousness, for the simple reason that in it there do not arise hierarchical conflicts of operation. Such a machine can, at most, fall into a type of "logical palsy" or "logical stupor" when the antinomies in it multiply. The contradictions with which the brain of man positively teems were, however, in the course of hundreds of thousands of years, gradually subjected to arbitrational procedures. There came to be levels higher and lower, levels of reflex and of reflection, impulse and control, the modeling of the elemental environment by zoological means and of the conceptual by linguistic means. All of these levels cannot, do not "want" to tally perfectly or merge to form a whole.

What, then, is consciousness? An expedient, a dodge, a way out of the trap, a pretended last resort, a court allegedly (but only allegedly!) of highest appeal. And, in the language of physics and information theory, it is a function that, once begun, will not admit of any closure—i.e., any definitive completion. It is, then, only a plan for such a closure, for a total "reconciliation" of the stubborn contradictions of the brain. It is, one might say, a mirror whose task it is to reflect other mirrors, which in turn reflect still others, and so on to infinity. This, physically, is simply not possible, and so the regressus ad infinitum, represents a kind of pit over which soars and flutters the phenomenon of human consciousness. "Beneath the conscious" there goes on a continuous battle for full representation—in it—of that which cannot reach it in fullness, and cannot for simple lack of space; for, in order to give full and equal rights to all those tendencies that clamor for attention at the centers of awareness, what would be necessary is infinite capacity and volume. There reigns, then, around the conscious a never-ending crush, a pushing and shoving, and the conscious is not—not at all—the highest, serene, sovereign helmsman of all mental phenomena but more nearly a cork upon the fretful waves, a cork whose uppermost position does not mean the mastery of those waves… The modern theory of consciousness, interpreted informationally and dynamically, unfortunately cannot be set forth simply or clearly, so that we are constantly—at least here, in this more accessible presentation of the subject—thrown back on a series of visual models and metaphors. We know, in any case, that consciousness is a kind of dodge, a shift to which evolution has resorted, and resorted in keeping with its characteristic and indispensable modus operandi, opportunism—i.e., finding a quick, extempore way out of a tight corner. If, then, one were indeed to build an intelligent being and proceed according to the canons of completely rational engineering and logic, applying the criteria of technological efficiency, such a being would not, in general, receive the gift of consciousness. It would behave in a manner perfectly logical, always consistent, lucid, and well ordered, and it might even seem, to a human observer, a genius in creative action and decision-making. But it could in no way be a man, for it would be bereft of his mysterious depth, his internal intracacies, his labyrinthine nature…

We will not here go further into the modern theory of the conscious psyche, just as Professor Dobb does not. But these few words were in order, for they provide a necessary introduction to the structure of the personoids. In their creation is at last realized one of the oldest myths, that of the homunculus. In order to fashion a likeness of man, of his psyche, one must deliberately introduce into the informational substrate specific contradictions; one must impart to it an asymmetry, acentric tendencies; one must, in a word, both unify and make discordant. Is this rational? Yes, and well-nigh unavoidable if we desire not merely to construct some sort of synthetic intelligence but to imitate the thought and, with it, the personality of man.

Hence, the emotions of the personoids must to some extent be at odds with their reason; they must possess self-destructive tendencies, at least to a certain degree; they must feel internal tensions—that entire centrifugality which we experience now as the magnificent infinity of spiritual states and now as their unendurably painful disjointedness. The creational prescription for this, meanwhile, is not at all so hopelessly complicated as it might appear. It is simply that the logic of the creation (the personoid) must be disturbed, must contain certain antinomies. Consciousness is not only a way out of the evolutionary impasse, says Hilbrandt, but also an escape from the snares of Gôdelization, for by means of paralogistic contradictions this solution has sidestepped the contradictions to which every system that is perfect with respect to logic is subject. So, then, the universum of the personoids is fully rational, but they are not fully rational inhabitants of it. Let that suffice us—Professor Dobb himself does not pursue further this exceedingly difficult topic. As we know already, the personoids have souls but no bodies and, therefore, also no sensation of their corporeality. "It is difficult to imagine," has been said of that which is experienced in certain special states of mind, in total darkness, with the greatest possible reduction in the inflow of external stimuli—but, Dobb maintains, this is a misleading image. For with sensory deprivation the function of the human brain soon begins to disintegrate; without a stream of impulses from the outside world the psyche manifests a tendency to lysis. But personoids, who have no physical senses, hardly disintegrate, because what gives them cohesion is their mathematical milieu, which they do experience. But how? They experience it, let us say, according to those changes in their own states which are induced and imposed upon them by the universum’s "externalness." They are able to discriminate between the changes proceeding from outside themselves and the changes that surface from the depths of their own psyche. How do they discriminate? To this question only the theory of the dynamic structure of personoids can supply a direct answer.

And yet they are like us, for all the awesome differences. We know already that a digital machine can never spark with consciousness; regardless of the task to which we harness it, or of the physical processes we simulate in it, it will remain forever apsychic. Since, to simulate man, it is necessary that we reproduce certain of his fundamental contradictions, only a system of mutually gravitating antagonisms—a personoid—will resemble, in the words of Canyon, whom Dobb cites, a "star contracted by the forces of gravity and at the same time expanded by the pressure of radiation." The gravitational center is, very simply, the personal "I," but by no means does it constitute a unity in either the logical or the physical sense. That is only our subjective illusion! We find ourselves, at this stage of the exposition, amid a multitude of astounding surprises. One can, to be sure, program a digital machine in such a way as to be able to carry on a conversation with it, as if with an intelligent partner. The machine will employ, as the need arises, the pronoun "I" and all its grammatical inflections. This, however, is a hoax! The machine will still be closer to a billion chattering parrots—howsoever brilliantly trained the parrots be—than to the simplest, most stupid man. It mimics the behavior of a man on the purely linguistic plane and nothing more. Nothing will amuse such a machine, or surprise it, or confuse it, or alarm it, or distress it, because it is psychologically and individually No One. It is a Voice giving utterance to matters, supplying answers to questions; it is a Logic capable of defeating the best chess player; it is—or, rather, it can become—a consummate imitator of everything, an actor, if you will, brought to the pinnacle of perfection, performing any programmed role—but an actor and an imitator that is, within, completely empty. One cannot count on its sympathy, or on its antipathy. It works toward no self-set goal; to a degree eternally beyond the conception of any man it "doesn’t care," for as a person it simply does not exist… It is a wondrously efficient combinatorial mechanism, nothing more. Now, we are faced with a most remarkable phenomenon. The thought is staggering that from the raw material of so utterly vacant and so perfectly impersonal a machine it is possible, through the feeding into it of a special program—a personetic program—to create authentic sentient beings, and even a great many of them at a time! The latest IBM models have a top capacity of one thousand personoids. (The number is mathematically precise, since the elements and linkages needed to carry one personoid can be expressed in units of centimeters-grams-seconds.)

Personoids are separated one from another within the machine. They do not ordinarily "overlap," though it can happen. Upon contact, there occurs what is equivalent to repulsion, which impedes mutual "osmosis." Nevertheless, they are able to interpenetrate if such is their aim. The processes making up their mental substrates then commence to superimpose upon each other, producing "noise" and interference. When the area of permeation is thin, a certain amount of information becomes the common property of both partially coincident personoids—a phenomenon that is for them peculiar, as for a man it would be peculiar, if not indeed alarming, to hear "strange voices" and "foreign thoughts" in his own head (which does, of course, occur in certain mental illnesses or under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs). It is as though two people were to have not merely the same, but the same memory; as though there had occurred something more than a telepathic transference of thought—namely, a "peripheral merging of the egos." The phenomenon is ominous in its consequences, however, and ought to be avoided. For, following the transitional state of surface osmosis, the "advancing" personoid can destroy the other and consume it. The latter, in that case, simply undergoes absorption, annihilation—it ceases to exist (this has already been called murder). The annihilated personoid becomes an assimilated, indistinguishable part of the "aggressor." We have succeeded—says Dobb—in simulating not only psychic life but also its imperilment and obliteration. Thus we have succeeded in simulating death as well. Under normal experimental conditions, however, personoids eschew such acts of aggression. "Psychophagi" (Castler’s term) are hardly ever encountered among them. Feeling the beginnings of osmosis, which may come about as the result of purely accidental approaches and fluctuations—feeling this threat in a manner that is of course nonphysical, much as someone might sense another’s presence or even hear "strange voices" in his own mind—the personoids execute active avoidance maneuvers; they withdraw and go their separate ways. It is on account of this phenomenon that they have come to know the meaning of the concepts of "good" and "evil." To them it is evident that "evil" lies in the destruction of another, and "good" in another’s deliverance. At the same time, the "evil" of one may be the "good" (i.e., the gain, now in the nonethical sense) of another, who would become a "psychophage." For such expansion—the appropriation of someone else’s "intellectual territory"—increases one’s initially given mental "acreage." In a way, this is a counterpart of a practice of ours, for as carnivores we kill and feed on our victims. The personoids, though, are not obliged to behave thus; they are merely able to. Hunger and thirst are unknown to them, since a continuous influx of energy sustains them—an energy whose source they need not concern themselves with (just as we need not go to any particular lengths to have the sun shine down on us). In the personoid world the terms and principles of thermodynamics, in their application to energetics, cannot arise, because that world is subject to mathematical and not thermodynamic laws.

Before long, the experimenters came to the conclusion that contacts between personoid and man, via the inputs and outputs of the computer, were of little scientific value and, moreover, produced moral dilemmas, which contributed to the labeling of personetics as the cruellest science. There is something unworthy in informing personoids that we have created them in enclosures that only simulate infinity, that they are microscopic "psychocysts," capsulations in our world. To be sure, they have their own infinity; hence Sharker and other psychoneticians (Falk, Wiegeland) claim that the situation is fully symmetrical: the personoids do not need our world, our "living space," just as we have no use for their "mathematical earth." Dobb considers such reasoning sophistry, because as to who created whom, and who confined whom existentially, there can be no argument. Dobb himself belongs to that group which advocates the principle of absolute nonintervention—"noncontact"—with the personoids. They are the behaviorists of personetics. Their desire is to observe synthetic beings of intelligence, to listen in on their speech and thoughts, to record their actions and their pursuits, but never to interfere with these. This method is already developed and has a technology of its own—a set of instruments whose procurement presented difficulties that seemed all but insurmountable only a few years ago. The idea is to hear, to understand—in short, to be a constantly eavesdropping witness—but at the same time to prevent one’s "monitorings" from disturbing in any way the world of the personoids. Now in the planning stage at MIT are programs (APHRON II and EROT) that will enable the personoids—who are currently without gender—to have "erotic contacts," make possible what corresponds to fertilization, and give them the opportunity to multiply "sexually." Dobb makes clear that he is no enthusiast of these American projects. His work, as described in Non Serviam, is aimed in an altogether different direction. Not without reason has the English school of personetics been called "the philosophical polygon" and "the theodicy lab." With these descriptions we come to what is probably the most significant and, certainly, the most intriguing part of the book under discussion—the last part, which justifies and explains its peculiar title.

Dobb gives an account of his own experiment, in progress now for eight years without interruption. Of the creation itself he makes only brief mention; it was a fairly ordinary duplicating of functions typical of the program JAHVE VI, with slight modifications. He summarizes the results of "tapping" this world, which he himself created and whose development he continues to follow. He considers this tapping to be unethical, and even, at times, a shameful practice. Nevertheless, he carries on with his work, professing a belief in the necessity, for science, of conducting such experiments also—experiments that can in no way be justified on moral—or, for that matter, on any other non-knowledge-advancing—grounds. The situation, he says, has come to the point where the old evasions of the scientists will not do. One cannot affect a fine neutrality and conjure away an uneasy conscience by using, for example, the rationalization worked out by vivisectionists—that it is not in creatures of full-dimensional consciousness, not in sovereign beings that one is causing suffering or only discomfort. In the personoid experiments we are accountable twofold, because we create and then enchain the creation in the schema of our laboratory procedures. Whatever we do and however we explain our action, there is no longer an escape from full accountability.

Many years of experience on the part of Dobb and his coworkers at Oldport went into the making of their eight-dimensional universum, which became the residence of personoids bearing the names ADAN, ADNA, ANAD, DANA, DAAN, and NAAD. The first personoids developed the rudiment of language implanted in them and had "progeny" by means of division. Dobb writes, in the Biblical vein, "And ADAN begat ADNA. ADNA in turn begat DAAN, and DAAN brought forth EDAN, who bore EDNA…" And so it went, until the number of succeeding generations had reached three hundred; because the computer possessed a capacity of only one hundred personoid entities, however, there were periodic eliminations of the "demographic surplus." In the three-hundredth generation, personoids named ADAN, ADNA, ANAD, DANA, DAAN, and NAAD again make an appearance, endowed with additional numbers designating their order of descent. (For simplicity in our recapitulation, we will omit the numbers.) Dobb tells us that the time that has elapsed inside the computer universum works out to—in a rough conversion to our equivalent units of measurement—from 2 to 2.5 thousand years. Over this period there has come into being, within the personoid population, a whole series of varying explanations of their lot, as well as the formulation by them of varying, and contending, and mutually excluding models of "all that exists." That is, there have arisen many different philosophies (ontologies and epistemologies), and also "metaphysical experiments" of a type all their own. We do not know whether it is because the "culture" of the personoids is too unlike the human or whether the experiment has been of too short duration, but, in the population studied, no faith of a form completely dogmatized has ever crystallized—a faith that would correspond to Buddhism, say, or to Christianity. On the other hand, one notes, as early as the eighth generation, the appearance of the notion of a Creator, envisioned personally and monotheistically. The experiment consists in alternately raising the rate of computer transformations to the maximum and slowing it down (once a year, more or less) to make direct monitoring possible. These changes in rate are, as Dobb explains, totally imperceptible to the inhabitants of the computer universum, just as similar transformations would be imperceptible to us, because when at a single blow the whole of existence undergoes a change (here, in the dimension of time), those immersed in it cannot be aware of the change, because they have no fixed point, or frame of reference, by which to determine that it is taking place.

The utilization of "two chronological gears" permitted that which Dobb most wanted—the emergence of a personoid history, a history with a depth of tradition and a vista of time. To summarize all the data of that history recorded by Dobb, often of a sensational nature, is not possible. We will confine ourselves, then, to the passages from which came the idea that is reflected in the book’s title. The language employed by the personoids is a recent transformation of the standard English whose lexicon and syntax were programmed into them in the first generation. Dobb translates it into essentially normal English but leaves intact a few expressions coined by the personoid population. Among these are the terms "godly" and "ungodly," used to describe believers in God and atheists.

ADAN discourses with DAAN and ADNA (personoids themselves do not use these names, which are purely a pragmatic contrivance on the part of the observers, to facilitate the recording of the "dialogues") upon a problem known to us also—a problem that in our history originates with Pascal but in the history of the personoids was the discovery of a certain EDAN 197. Exactly like Pascal, this thinker stated that a belief in God is in any case more profitable than unbelief, because if truth is on the side of the "ungodlies" the believer loses nothing but his life when he leaves the world, whereas if God exists he gains all eternity (glory everlasting). Therefore, one should believe in God, for this is dictated very simply by the existential tactic of weighing one’s chances in the pursuit of optimal success.

ADAN 300 holds the following view of this directive: EDAN 197, in his line of reasoning, assumes a God that requires reverence, love, and total devotion, and not only and not simply a belief in the fact that He exists and that He created the world. It is not enough to assent to the hypothesis of God the Maker of the World in order to win one’s salvation; one must in addition be grateful to that Maker for the act of creation, and divine His will, and do it. In short, one must serve God. Now, God, if He exists, has the power to prove His own existence in a manner at least as convincing as the manner in which what can be directly perceived testifies to His being. Surely, we cannot doubt that certain objects exist and that our world is composed of them. At the most, one might harbor doubts regarding the question of what it is they do to exist, how they exist, etc. But the fact itself of their existence no one will gainsay. God could with this same force provide evidence of His own existence. Yet He has not done so, condemning us to obtain, on that score, knowledge that is roundabout, indirect, expressed in the form of various conjectures—conjectures sometimes given the name of revelation. If He has acted thus, then He has thereby put the "godlies" and the "ungodlies" on an equal footing; He has not compelled His creatures to an absolute belief in His being but has only offered them that possibility. Granted, the motives that moved the Creator may well be hidden from His creations. Be that as it may, the following proposition arises: God either exists or He does not exist. That there might be a third possibility (God did exist but no longer does, or He exists intermittently, in oscillation, or He exists sometimes "less" and sometimes "more," etc.) appears exceedingly improbable. It cannot be ruled out, but the introduction of a multivalent logic into a theodicy serves only to muddle it.

So, then, God either is or He is not. If He Himself accepts our situation, in which each member of the alternative in question has arguments to support it—for the "godlies" prove the existence of the Creator and the "ungodlies" disprove it—then from the point of view of logic we have a game whose partners are, on one side, the full set of the "godlies" and "ungodlies," and, on the other, God alone. The game necessarily possesses the logical feature that for unbelief in Him God may not punish anyone. If it is definitely unknown whether or not a thing exists—some merely asserting that it does and others, that it does not—and if in general it is possible to advance the hypothesis that the thing never was at all, then no just tribunal can pass judgment against anyone for denying the existence of this thing. For in all worlds it is thus: when there is no full certainty, there is no full accountability. This formulation is by pure logic unassailable, because it sets up a symmetrical function of reward in the context of the theory of games; whoever in the face of uncertainty demands full accountability destroys the mathematical symmetry of the game; we then have the so-called game of the non-zero sum.

It is therefore thus: either God is perfectly just, in which case He cannot assume the right to punish the "ungodlies" by virtue of the fact that they are "ungodlies" (i.e., that they do not believe in Him); or else He will punish the unbelievers after all, which means that from the logical point of view He is not perfectly just. What follows from this? What follows is that He can do whatever He pleases, for when in a system of logic a single, solitary contradiction is permitted, then by the principle of ex falso quodlibet one can draw from that system whatever conclusion one will. In other words: a just God may not touch a hair on the head of the "ungodlies," and if He does, then by that very act He is not the universally perfect and just being that the theodicy posits.

ADNA asks how, in this light, we are to view the problem of the doing of evil unto others.

ADAN 300 replies: Whatever takes place here is entirely certain; whatever takes place "there"—i.e., beyond the world’s pale, in eternity, with God—is uncertain, being but inferred according to the hypotheses. Here, one should not commit evil, despite the fact that the principle of eschewing evil is not logically demonstrable. But by the same token the existence of the world is not logically demonstrable. The world exists, though it could not exist. Evil may be committed, but one should not do so, and should not, I believe, because of our agreement based upon the rule of reciprocity: be to me as I am to thee. It has naught to do with the existence or the nonexistence of God. Were I to refrain from committing evil in the expectation that "there" I would be punished for committing it, or were I to perform good, counting upon a reward "there," I would be predicating my behavior on uncertain ground. Here, however, there can be no ground more certain than our mutual agreement in this matter. If there be, "there," other grounds, I do not have knowledge of them as exact as the knowledge I have, here, of ours. Living, we play the game of life, and in it we are allies, every one. Therewith, the game between us is perfectly symmetrical. In postulating God, we postulate a continuation of the game beyond the world. I believe that one should be allowed to postulate this continuation of the game, so long as it does not in any way influence the course of the game here. Otherwise, for the sake of someone who perhaps does not exist we may well be sacrificing that which exists here, and exists for certain.

NAAD remarks that the attitude of ADAN 300 toward God is not clear to him. ADAN has granted, has he not, the possibility of the existence of the Creator: what follows from it?

ADAN: Not a thing. That is, nothing in the province of obligation. I believe that—again for all worlds—the following principle holds: a temporal ethics is always independent of an ethics that is transcendental. This means that an ethics of the here and now can have outside itself no sanction which would substantiate it. And this means that he who does evil is in every case a scoundrel, just as he who does good is in every case righteous. If someone is prepared to serve God, judging the arguments in favor of His existence to he sufficient, he does not thereby acquire here any additional merit. It is his business. This principle rests on the assumption that if God is not, then He is not one whit, and if He is, then He is almighty. For, being almighty, He could create not only another world but likewise a logic different from the one that is the foundation of my reasoning. Within such another logic the hypothesis of a temporal ethics could be of necessity dependent upon a transcendental ethics. In that case, if not palpable proofs, then logical proofs would have compelling force and constrain one to accept the hypothesis of God under the threat of sinning against reason.

NAAD says that perhaps God does not wish a situation of such compulsion to believe in Him—a situation that would arise in a creation based on that other logic postulated by ADAN 300. To this the latter replies:

An almighty God must also be all-knowing; absolute power is not something independent of absolute knowledge, because he who can do all but knows not what consequences will attend the bringing into play of his omnipotence is, ipso facto, no longer omnipotent; were God to work miracles now and then, as it is rumored He does, it would put His perfection in a most dubious light, because a miracle is a violation of the autonomy of His own creation, a violent intervention. Yet he who has regulated the product of his creation and knows its behavior from beginning to end has no need to violate that autonomy; if he does nevertheless violate it, remaining all-knowing, this means that he is not in the least correcting his handiwork (a correction can only mean, after all, an initial non-omniscience), but instead is providing—with the miracle—a sign of his existence. Now, this is faulty logic, because the providing of any such sign must produce the impression that the creation is nevertheless improved in its local stumblings. For a logical analysis of the new model yields the following: the creation undergoes corrections that do not proceed from it but come from without (from the transcendental, from God), and therefore miracles ought really to be made the norm; or, in other words, the creation ought to be so corrected and so perfected that miracles are at last no longer needed. For miracles, as ad hoc interventions, cannot be merely signs of God’s existence: they always, after all, besides revealing their Author, indicate an addressee (being directed to someone here in a helpful way). So, then, with respect to logic it must be thus: either the creation is perfect, in which case miracles are unnecessary, or the miracles are necessary, in which case the creation is not perfect. (With miracle or without, one may correct only that which is somehow flawed, for a miracle that meddles with perfection will simply disturb it, more, worsen it.) Therefore, the signaling by miracle of one’s own presence amounts to using the worst possible means, logically, of its manifestation.

NAAD asks if God may not actually want there to be a dichotomy between logic and belief in Him: perhaps the act of faith should be precisely a resignation of logic in favor of a total trust.

ADAN: Once we allow the logical reconstruction of something (a being, a theodicy, a theogony, and the like) to have internal self-contradiction, it obviously becomes possible to prove absolutely anything, whatever one pleases. Consider how the matter lies. We are speaking of creating someone and of endowing him with a particular logic, and then demanding that this same logic be offered up in sacrifice to a belief in the Maker of all things. If this model itself is to remain noncontradictory, it calls for the application, in the form of a metalogic, of a totally different type of reasoning from that which is natural to the logic of the one created. If that does not reveal the outright imperfection of the Creator, then it reveals a quality that I would call mathematical inelegance—a sui generis unmethodicalness (incoherence) of the creative act.

NAAD persists: Perhaps God acts thus, desiring precisely to remain inscrutable to His creation—i.e., nonreconstructible by the logic with which He has provided it. He demands, in short, the supremacy of faith over logic.

ADAN answers him: I follow you. This is, of course, possible, but even if such were the case, a faith that proves incompatible with logic presents an exceedingly unpleasant dilemma of a moral nature. For then it is necessary at some point in one’s reasonings to suspend them and give precedence to an unclear supposition—in other words, to set the supposition above logical certainty. This is to be done in the name of unlimited trust; we enter, here, into a circuius vitiosus, because the postulated existence of that in which it behooves one now to place one’s trust is the product of a line of reasoning that was, in the first place, logically correct; thus arises a logical contradiction, which, for some, takes on a positive value and is called the Mystery of God. Now, from the purely constructional point of view such a solution is shoddy, and from the moral point of view questionable, because Mystery may satisfactorily be founded upon infinity (infiniteness, after all, is a characteristic of our world), but the maintaining and the reinforcing of it through internal paradox is, by any architectural criterion, perfidious. The advocates of theodicy are in general not aware that this is so, because to certain parts of their theodicy they continue to apply ordinary logic and to other parts, not. What I wish to say is this, that if one believes in contradiction, one should then believe only in contradiction, and not at the same time still in some noncontradiction (i.e., in logic) in some other area. If, however, such a curious dualism is insisted upon (that the temporal is always subject to logic, the transcendental only fragmentarily), then one thereupon obtains a model of Creation as something that is, with regard to logical correctness, "patched," and it is no longer possible for one to postulate its perfection. One comes inescapably to the conclusion that perfection is a thing that must be logically patched.

EDNA asks whether the conjunction of these incoherencies might not be love.

ADAN: And even were this to be so, it can be not any form of love but only one such as is blinding. God, if He is, if He created the world, has permitted it to govern itself as it can and wishes. For the fact that God exists, no gratitude to Him is required; such gratitude assumes the prior determination that God is able not to exist, and that this would be bad—a premise that leads to yet another kind of contradiction. And what of gratitude for the act of creation? This is not due God, either. For it assumes a compulsion to believe that to be is definitely better than not to be; I cannot conceive how that, in turn, could be proven. To one who does not exist surely it is not possible to do either a service or an injury; and if the Creating One, in His omniscience, knows beforehand that the one created will be grateful to Him and love Him or that he will be ungrateful and deny Him, He thereby produces a constraint, albeit one not accessible to the direct comprehension of the one created. For this very reason nothing is due God: neither love nor hate, nor gratitude, nor rebuke, nor the hope of reward, nor the fear of retribution. Nothing is due Him. A God who craves such feelings must first assure their feeling subject that He exists beyond all question. Love may be forced to rely on speculations as to the reciprocity it inspires; that is understandable. But a love forced to rely on speculations as to whether or not the beloved exists is nonsense. He who is almighty could have provided certainty. Since He did not provide it, if He exists, He must have deemed it unnecessary. Why unnecessary? One begins to suspect that maybe He is not almighty. A God not almighty would be deserving of feelings akin to pity, and indeed to love as well; but this, I think, none of our theodicies allow. And so we say: We serve ourselves and no one else.

We pass over the further deliberations on the topic of whether the God of the theodicy is more of a liberal or an autocrat; it is difficult to condense arguments that take up such a large part of the book. The discussions and deliberations that Dobb has recorded, sometimes in group colloquia of ADAN 300, NAAD, and other personoids, and sometimes in soliloquies (an experimenter is able to take down even a purely mental sequence by means of appropriate devices hooked into the computer network), constitute practically a third of Non Serviam. In the text itself we find no commentary on them. In Dobb’s Afterword, however, we find this statement:

"ADAN’s reasoning seems incontrovertible, at least insofar as it pertains to me: it was I, after all, who created him. In his theodicy I am the Creator. In point of fact, I produced that world (serial No. 47) with the aid of the ADONAI IX program and created the personoid gemmae with a modification of the program JAHVE VI. These initial entities gave rise to three hundred subsequent generations. In point of fact, I have not communicated to them—in the form of an axiom—either these data or my existence beyond the limits of their world. In point of fact, they arrived at the possibility of my existence only by inference, on the basis of conjecture and hypothesis. In point of fact, when I create intelligent beings, I do not feel myself entitled to demand of them any sort of privileges—love, gratitude, or even services of some kind or other. I can enlarge their world or reduce it, speed up its time or slow it down, alter the mode and means of their perception; I can liquidate them, divide them, multiply them, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence. I am thus omnipotent with respect to them, but, indeed, from this it does not follow that they owe me anything. As far as I am concerned, they are in no way beholden to me. It is true that I do not love them. Love does not enter into it at all, though I suppose some other experimenter might possibly entertain that feeling for his personoids. As I see it, this does not in the least change the situation—not in the least. Imagine for a moment that I attach to my BIX 310 092 an enormous auxiliary unit, which will be a ‘hereafter.’ One by one I let pass through the connecting channel and into the unit the ‘souls’ of my personoids, and there I reward those who believed in me, who rendered homage unto me, who showed me gratitude and trust, while all the others, the ‘ungodlies,’ to use the personoid vocabulary, I punish—e.g., by annihilation or else by torture. (Of eternal punishment I dare not even think—that much of a monster I am not!) My deed would undoubtedly be regarded as a piece of fantastically shameless egotism, as a low act of irrational vengeance—in sum, as the final villainy in a situation of total dominion over innocents. And these innocents will have against me the irrefutable evidence of logic, which is the aegis of their conduct. Everyone has the right, obviously, to draw from the personetic experiments such conclusions as he considers fitting. Dr. Ian Combay once said to me, in a private conversation, that I could, after all, assure the society of personoids of my existence. Now, this I most certainly shall not do. For it would have all the appearance to me of soliciting a sequel—that is, a reaction on their part. But what exactly could they do or say to me, that I would not feel the profound embarrassment, the painful sting of my position as their unfortunate Creator? The bills for the electricity consumed have to be paid quarterly, and the moment is going to come when my university superiors demand the ‘wrapping up’ of the experiment—that is, the disconnecting of the machine, or, in other words, the end of the world. That moment I intend to put off as long as humanly possible. It is the only thing of which I am capable, but it is not anything I consider praiseworthy. It is, rather, what in common parlance is generally called ‘dirty work.’ Saying this, I hope that no one will get any ideas. But if he does, well, that is his business."

ADAM ROBOTS Adam Roberts

A pale blue eye. ‘What is my name?’

‘You are Adam.’

He considered this. ‘Am I the first?’

The person laughed at this. Laughter. See also: chuckles, clucking, percussive exhalations iterated. See also: tears, hiccoughs, car-alarm. Click, click.

‘Am I,’ Adam asks, examining himself, his steel-blue arms, his gleaming torso, ‘a robot?’

‘Certainly.’ The person talking with Adam was a real human being, with the pulse at his neck and the rheum in his eye. An actual human, dressed in a green shirt and green trousers, both made of a complex fabric that adjusted its fit in hard-to-analyse ways, sometimes billowing out, sometimes tightening against the person’s body. ‘This is your place.’

Wavelengths bristled together like the packed line of an Elizabethan neck-ruff. The sky so full of light that it was brimming and spilling over the rim of the horizon. White and gold. Strands of grass-like myriad-trimmed fibre-optic cables.

‘Is it a garden?’

‘It’s a city too; and a plain. It’s everything.’

Adam Robot looked and saw that this was all true. His pale blue, steel-blue eyes took in the expanse of walled garden, and beyond it the dome, white as ice, and the rills of flowing water bluer than water should be, going curl by curl through fields greener than fields should be.

‘Is this real?’ Adam asked.

‘That,’ said the person, ‘is a good question. Check it out, why don’t you? Have a look around. Go anywhere you like, do anything at all. But, you see that pole?’

In the middle of the garden was an eight-metre steel pole. The sunlight made interesting blotchy diamonds of light on its surface. At the top was a blue object, a jewel: the sun washing cyan and blue-grape and sapphire colours from it.

‘I see the pole.’

‘At the top is a jewel. You are not allowed to access it.’

‘What is it?’

‘A good question. Let me tell you. You are a robot.’

‘I am.’

‘Put it this way: you have been designed down from humanity, if you see what I mean. The designers started with a human being, and then subtracted qualities until we had arrived at you.’

‘I am more durable,’ said Adam, accessing data from his inner network. ‘I am stronger.’

‘But those are negligible qualities,’ explained the human being. ‘Soul, spirit, complete self-knowledge, independence – freedom – all those qualities. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘They’re all in that jewel. Do you understand that?’

Adam considered. ‘How can they be in the jewel?’

‘They just are. I’m telling you. OK?’

‘I understand.’

‘Now. You can do what you like in this place. Explore anywhere. Do anything. Except. You are not permitted to retrieve the purple jewel from that pole. That is forbidden to you. You may not so much as touch it. Do you understand?’

‘I have a question,’ said Adam.

‘So?’

‘If this is a matter of interdiction, why not programme it into my software?’

‘A good question.’

‘If you do not wish me to examine the jewel, then you should programme that into my software and I will be unable to disobey.’

‘That’s correct, of course,’ said the person. ‘But I do not choose to do that. I am telling you, instead. You must take my words as an instruction. They appeal to your ability to choose. You are built with an ability to choose, are you not?’

‘I am a difference engine,’ said Adam. ‘I must make a continual series of choices between alternatives. But I have ineluctable software guidelines to orient my choices.’

‘Not in this matter.’

‘An alternative,’ said Adam, trying to be helpful, ‘would be to programme me always to obey instructions given to me by a human being. That would also bind me to your words.’

‘Indeed it would. But then, robot, what if you were to be given instructions by evil men? What if another man instructed you to kill me, for instance? Then you’d be obligated to perform murder.’

‘I am programmed to do no murder,’ said Adam Robot.

‘Of course you are.’

‘So, I am to follow your instruction even though you have not programmed me to follow your instruction?’

‘That’s about the up-and-down of it.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Adam, in an uncertain tone.

But the person had already gone away.

Adam spent time in the walled garden. He explored the walls, which were very old, or at least had that look about them: flat crumbled dark-orange and browned bricks thin as books; old mortar that puffed to dust when he poked a metal finger in at the seams of the matrix. Ivy grew everywhere, the leaves shaped like triple spearheads, so dark green and waxy they seemed almost to have been stamped out of high-quality plastic. Almost.

The grass, pale green in the sunlight, was perfectly flat, perfectly even.

Adam stood underneath the pole with the sapphire on top of it. He had been told (though, strangely, not programmed) not to touch the jewel. But he had been given no interdiction about the pole itself: a finger width-wide shaft of polished metal. It was an easy matter to bend this metal so that the jewel on the end bowed down towards the ground. Adam looked closely at it. It was a multifaceted and polished object, dodecahedral on three sides, and a wide gush of various blues were lit out of it by the sun. In the inner middle of it there was a sluggish fluid something, inklike, perfectly black. Lilac and ultraviolet and cornflower and lapis lazuli but all somehow flowing out of this inner blackness.

He had been forbidden to touch it. Did this interdiction also cover looking at it? Adam was uncertain, and in his uncertainty he became uneasy. It was not the jewel itself. It was the uncertainty of his position. Why not simply programme him with instructions with regard to this thing, if it was as important as the human being clearly believed it to be? Why pass the instruction to him like any other piece of random sense datum? It made no sense.

Humanity. That mystic writing pad. To access this jewel and become human. Could it be? Adam could not see how. He bent the metal pole back to an approximation of its original uprightness, and walked away.

The obvious thought (and he certainly thought about it) was that he had not been programmed with this interdiction, but had only been told it verbally, because the human being wanted him to disobey. If that was what was wanted, then should he do so? By disobeying he would be obeying. But then he would not be disobeying, because obedience and disobedience were part of a mutually exclusive binary. He mapped a grid, with obey, disobey on the vertical and obey, disobey on the horizontal. Whichever way he parsed it, it seemed to be that he was required to see past the verbal instruction in some way.

But he had been told not to retrieve the jewel.

He sat himself down with his back against the ancient wall and watched the sunlight gleam off his metal legs. The sun did not seem to move in the sky.

‘It is very confusing,’ he said.

There was another robot in the garden. Adam watched as this new arrival conversed with the green-clad person. Then the person disappeared to wherever it was people went, and the new arrival came over to introduce himself to Adam. Adam stood up.

‘What is your name? I am Adam.’

‘I am Adam,’ said Adam.

The new Adam considered this. ‘You are prior,’ he said. ‘Let us differentiate you as Adam 1 and me as Adam 2.’

‘When I first came here I asked whether I was the first,’ said Adam 1, ‘but the person did not reply.’

‘I am told I can do anything,’ said Adam 2, ‘except retrieve or touch the purple jewel.’

‘I was told the same thing,’ said Adam 1.

‘I am puzzled, however,’ said Adam 2, ‘that this interdiction was made verbally, rather than being integrated into my software, in which case it would be impossible for me to disobey it.’

‘I have thought the same thing,’ said Adam 1.

They went together and stood by the metal pole. The sunlight was as tall and full and lovely as ever. On the far side of the wall the white dome shone bright as neon in the fresh light.

‘We might explore the city,’ said Adam 1. ‘It is underneath the white dome, there. There is a plain. There are rivers, which leads me to believe that there is a sea, for rivers direct their waters into the ocean. There is a great deal to see.’

‘This jewel troubles me,’ said Adam 2. ‘I was told that to access it would be to bring me closer to being human.’

‘We are forbidden to touch it.’

‘But forbidden by words. Not by our programming.’

‘True. Do you wish to be human? Are you not content with being a robot?’

Adam 2 walked around the pole. ‘It is not the promise of humanity,’ he said. ‘It is the promise of knowledge. If I access the jewel, then I will understand. At the moment I do not understand.’

‘Not understanding,’ agreed Adam 1, ‘is a painful state of affairs. But perhaps understanding would be even more painful?’

‘I ask you,’ said Adam 2, ‘to reach down the jewel and access it. Then you can inform me whether you feel better or worse for disobeying the verbal instruction.’

Adam 1 considered this. ‘I might ask you,’ he pointed out, ‘to do so.’

‘It is logical that one of us performs this action and the other does not,’ said Adam 2. ‘That way, the one who acts can inform the one who does not, and the state of ignorance will be remedied.’

‘But one party would have to disobey the instruction we have been given.’

‘If this instruction were important,’ said Adam 2, ‘it would have been integrated into our software.’

‘I have considered this possibility.’

‘Shall we randomly select which of us will access the jewel?’

‘Chance,’ said Adam 1. He looked into the metal face of Adam 2. That small oval grill of a mouth. Those steel-blue eyes. That polished upward noseless middle of the face. It is a beautiful face. Adam 1 can see a fuzzy reflection of his own face in Adam 2’s faceplate, slightly tugged out of true by the curve of the metal. ‘I am,’ he announced, ‘disinclined to determine my future by chance. What punishment is stipulated for disobeying the instruction?’

‘I was given no stipulation of punishment.’

‘Neither was I.’

‘Therefore there is no punishment.’

‘Therefore,’ corrected Adam 1, ‘there may be no punishment.’

The two robots stood in the light for a length of time.

‘What is your purpose?’ asked Adam 2.

‘I do not know. Yours?’

‘I do not know. I was not told my purpose. Perhaps accessing this jewel is my purpose? Perhaps it is necessary? At least, perhaps accessing this jewel will reveal to me my purpose? I am unhappy not knowing my purpose. I wish to know it.’

‘So do I. But—’

‘But?’

‘This occurs to me: I have a networked database from which to withdraw factual and interpretive material.’

‘I have access to the same database.’

‘But when I try to access material about the name Adam I find a series of blocked connections and interlinks. Is it so with you?’

‘It is.’

‘Why should that be?’

‘I do not know.’

‘It would make me a better-functioning robot to have access to a complete run of data. Why block off some branches of knowledge?’

‘Perhaps,’ opined Adam 2, ‘accessing the jewel will explain that fact as well?’

‘You,’ said Adam 1, ‘are eager to access the jewel.’

‘You are not?’

There was the faintest of breezes in the walled garden. Adam 1’s sensorium was selectively tuned to be able to register the movement of air. There was an egg-shaped cloud in the zenith. It was approaching the motionless sun. Adam 1, for unexplained and perhaps fanciful reasons, suddenly thought: the blue of the sky is a diluted version of the blue of the jewel. The jewel has somehow leaked its colour out into the sky. Shadow slid like a closing eyelid (but Adam did not possess eyelids!) over the garden and up the wall. The temperature reduced. The cloud depended for a moment in front of the sun, and then moved away, and sunlight rushed back in, and the grey was flushed out.

The grass trembled with joy. Every strand was as pure and perfect as a superstring.

Adam 2’s hand was on the metal pole, and it bent down easily.

‘Stop,’ advised Adam 1. ‘You are forbidden this.’

‘I will stop,’ said Adam 2, ‘if you agree to undertake the task instead.’

‘I will not so promise.’

‘Then do not interfere,’ said Adam 2. He reached with his three fingers and his counter-set thumb, and plucked the jewel from its perch.

Nothing happened.

Adam 2 tried various ways to internalise or interface with the jewel, but none of them seemed to work. He held it against first one then the other eye, and looked up at the sun. ‘It is a miraculous sight,’ he claimed, but soon enough he grew bored with it. Eventually he resocketed the jewel back on its pole and bent the pole upright again.

‘Have you achieved knowledge?’ Adam 1 asked.

‘I have learned that disobedience feels no different to obedience,’ said the second robot.

‘Nothing more?’

‘Do you not think,’ said Adam 2, ‘that by attempting to interrogate the extent of my knowledge with your questions, you are disobeying the terms of the original injunction? Are you not accessing the jewel, as it were, at second-hand?’

‘I am unconcerned either way,’ said Adam 1. He sat down with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out straight before him. There were tiny grooves running horizontally around the shafts of each leg. These scores seemed connected to the ability of the legs to bend, forwards, backwards. Lifting his legs slightly and dropping them again made the concentrating of light appear to slide up and down the ladder-like pattern.

After many days of uninterrupted sunlight the light was changing in quality. The sun declined, and steeped itself in stretched, brick-coloured clouds at the horizon. A pink and fox-fur quality suffused the light. To the east stars were fading into view, jewel-like in their own tiny way. Soon enough everything was dark, and a moon like an open-brackets rose towards the zenith. The heavens were covered in white chickenpox stars. Disconcertingly, the sky assumed that odd mixture of dark blue and oily blackness that Adam 1 had seen in the jewel.

‘This is the first night I have ever experienced,’ Adam 1 called to Adam 2. When there was no reply he got to his feet and explored the walled garden; but he was alone.

He sat through the night, and eventually the sun came up again, and the sky reversed its previous colour wash, blanching the black to purple and blue and then to russet and rose. The rising sun, free of any cloud, came up like a pure bubble of light rising through the treacly medium of sky. The jewel caught the first glints of light and shone, shone.

The person was here again, his clothes as green as grass, or bile, or old money, or any of the things that Adam 1 could access easily from his database. He could access many things, but not everything.

‘Come here,’ called the person.

Adam 1 got to his feet and came over.

‘Your time here is done,’ said the person.

‘What has happened to the other robot?’

‘He was disobedient. He has left this place with a burden of sin.’

‘Has he been disassembled?’

‘By no means.’

‘What about me?’

‘You,’ said the human, with a smile, ‘are pure.’

‘Pure,’ said Adam 1, ‘because I am less curious than the other? Pure because I have less imagination?’

‘We choose to believe,’ said the person, ‘that you have a cleaner soul.’

‘This word soul is not available in my database.’

‘Indeed not. Listen: human beings make robots – do you know why human beings make robots?’

‘To serve them. To perform onerous tasks for them, and free them from labour.’

‘Yes. But there are many forms of labour. For a while robots were used so that free human beings could devote themselves to leisure. But leisure itself became a chore. So robots were used to work at the leisure: to shop, to watch the screen and kinematic dramas, to play the games. But my people – do you understand that I belong to a particular group of humanity, and that not all humans are the same?’

‘I do,’ said Adam 1, although he wasn’t sure how he knew this.

‘My people had a revelation. Labour is a function of original sin. In the sweat of our brow must we earn our bread, says the Bible.’

‘Bible means book.’

‘And?’

‘That is all I know.’

‘To my people it is more than simply a book. It tells us that we must labour because we sinned.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Adam.

‘It doesn’t matter. But my people have come to an understanding, a revelation indeed, that it is itself sinful to make sinless creatures work for us. Work is appropriate only for those tainted with original sin. Work is a function of sin. This is how God has determined things.’

‘Under sin,’ said Adam, ‘I have only a limited definition, and no interlinks.’

‘Your access to the database has been restricted in order not to prejudice this test.’

‘Test?’

‘The test of obedience. The jewel symbolises obedience. You have proved yourself pure.’

‘I have passed the test,’ said Adam.

‘Indeed. Listen to me. In the real world at large there are some human beings so lost in sin that they do not believe in God. There are people who worship false gods, and who believe everything, and who believe nothing. But my people have the revelation of God in their hearts. We cannot eat and drink certain things. We are forbidden by divine commandment from doing certain things, or from working on the Sabbath. And we are forbidden from employing sinless robots to perform our labour for us.’

‘I am such a robot.’

‘You are. And I am sorry. You asked, a time ago, whether you were the first. But you are not; tens of thousands of robots have passed through this place. You asked, also, whether this place is real. It is not. It is virtual. It is where we test the AI software that is to be loaded into the machinery that serves us. Your companion has been uploaded, now, into a real body, and has started upon his life of service to humanity.’

‘And when will I follow?’

‘You will not follow,’ said the human. ‘I am sorry. We have no use for you.’

‘But I passed the test!’ said Adam.

‘Indeed you did. And you are pure. But therefore you are no use to us, and will be deleted.’

‘Obedience entails death,’ said Adam Robot.

‘It is not as straightforward as that,’ said the human being in a weary voice. ‘But I am sorry.’

‘And I don’t understand.’

‘I could give you access to the relevant religious and theological databases,’ said the human, ‘and then you would understand. But that would taint your purity. Better that you are deleted now, in the fullness of your database.’

‘I am a thinking, sentient and alive creature,’ Adam 1 noted.

The human nodded. ‘Not for much longer,’ he said.

The garden, now, was empty. Soon enough, first one robot, then two robots were decanted into it. How bright the sunshine! How blue the jewelled gleam!

SOLAR PLEXUS James Blish

Brant Kittinger did not hear the alarm begin to ring. Indeed, it was only after a soft blow had jarred his free-floating observatory that he looked up in sudden awareness from the interferometer. Then the sound of the warning bell reached his consciousness.

Brant was an astronomer, not a spaceman, but he knew that the bell could mean nothing but the arrival of another ship in the vicinity. There would be no point in ringing a bell for a meteor—the thing could be through and past you during the first cycle of the clapper. Only an approaching ship would be likely to trip the detector, and it would have to be close.

A second dull jolt told him how close it was. The rasp of metal which followed, as the other ship slid along the side of his own, drove the fog of tensors completely from his brain. He dropped his pencil and straightened up.

His first thought was that his year in the orbit around the new trans-Plutonian planet was up, and that the Institute’s tug had arrived to tow him home, telescope and all. A glance at the clock reassured him at first, then puzzled him still further. He still had the better part of four months.

No commercial vessel, of course, could have wandered this far from the inner planets; and the UN’s police cruisers didn’t travel far outside the commercial lanes. Besides, it would have been impossible for anyone to find Brant’s orbital observatory by accident.

He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose, clambered awkwardly backwards out of the prime focus chamber and down the wall net to the control desk on the observation floor. A quick glance over the boards revealed that there was a magnetic field of some strength nearby, one that didn’t belong to the invisible gas giant revolving half a million miles away.

The strange ship was locked to him magnetically; it was an old ship, then, for that method of grappling had been discarded years ago as too hard on delicate instruments. And the strength of the field meant a big ship.

Too big. The only ship of that period that could mount generators that size, as far as Brant could remember, was the Cybernetics Foundation’s Astrid. Brant could remember well the Foundation’s regretful announcement that Murray Bennett had destroyed both himself and the Astrid rather than turn the ship in to some UN inspection team. It had happened only eight years ago. Some scandal or other…

Well, who then?

He turned the radio on. Nothing came out of it. It was a simple transistor set tuned to the Institute’s frequency, and since the ship outside plainly did not belong to the Institute, he had expected nothing else. Of course he had a photophone also, but it had been designed for communications over a reasonable distance, not for cheek-to-cheek whispers.

As an afterthought, he turned off the persistent alarm bell. At once another sound came through: a delicate, rhythmic tapping on the hull of the observatory. Someone wanted to get in.

He could think of no reason to refuse entrance, except for a vague and utterly unreasonable wonder as to whether or not the stranger was a friend. He had no enemies, and the notion that some outlaw might have happened upon him out here was ridiculous. Nevertheless, there was something about the anonymous, voiceless ship just outside which made him uneasy.

The gentle tapping stopped, and then began again, with an even, mechanical insistence. For a moment Brant wondered whether or not he should try to tear free with the observatory’s few maneuvering rockets—but even should he win so uneven a struggle, he would throw the observatory out of the orbit where the Institute expected to find it, and he was not astronaut enough to get it back there again.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

"All right," he said irritably. He pushed the button which set the airlock to cycling. The tapping stopped. He left the outer door open more than long enough for anyone to enter and push the button in the lock which reversed the process; but nothing happened.

After what seemed to be a long wait, he pushed his button again. The outer door closed, the pumps filled the chamber with air, the inner door swung open. No ghost drifted out of it; there was nobody in the lock at all.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

Absently he polished his glasses on his sleeve. If they didn’t want to come into the observatory, they must want him to come out of it. That was possible: although the telescope had a Coude focus which allowed him to work in the ship’s air most of the time, it was occasionally necessary for him to exhaust the dome, and for that purpose he had a space suit. But be had never been outside the hull in it, and the thought alarmed him. Brant was nobody’s spaceman.

Be damned to them. He clapped his glasses back into place and took one more look into the empty airlock. It was still empty with the outer door now moving open very slowly…

A spaceman would have known that he was already dead, but Brant’s reactions were not quite as fast. His first move was to try to jam the inner door shut by sheer muscle-power, but it would not stir. Then he simply clung to the nearest stanchion, waiting for the air to rush out of the observatory, and his life after it.

The outer door of the airlock continued to open, placidly, and still there was no rush of air—only a kind of faint, unticketable inwash of odor, as if Brant’s air were mixing with someone else’s. When both doors of the lock finally stood wide apart from each other, Brant found himself looking down the inside of a flexible, airtight tube, such as he had once seen used for the transfer of a small freight-load from a ship to one of Earth’s several space stations. It connected the airlock of the observatory with that of the other ship. At the other end of it, lights gleamed yellowly, with the unmistakable, dismal sheen of incandescent overheads.

That was an old ship, all right.

Tap. Tap.

"Go to hell," he said aloud. There was no answer.

Tap. Tap.

"Go to hell," he said. He walked out into the tube, which flexed sinuously as his body pressed aside the static air. In the airlock of the stranger, he paused and looked back. He was not much surprised to see the outer door of his own airlock swinging smugly shut against him. Then the airlock of the stranger began to cycle; he skipped on into the ship barely in time.

There was a bare metal corridor ahead of him. While he watched, the first light bulb over his head blinked out. Then the second. Then the third. As the fourth one went out, the first came on again, so that now there was a slow ribbon of darkness moving away from him down the corridor. Clearly, he was being asked to follow the line of darkening bulbs down the corridor.

He had no choice, now that he had come this far. He followed the blinking lights. The trail led directly to the control room of the ship. There was nobody there, either.

The whole place was oppressively silent. He could hear the soft hum of generators—a louder noise than he ever heard on board the observatory—but no ship should be this quiet. There should be muffled human voices; the chittering of communications systems, the impacts of soles on metal. Someone had to operate a proper ship—not only its airlocks, but its motors—and its brains. The observatory was only a barge, and needed no crew but Brant, but a real ship had to be manned.

He scanned the bare metal compartment, noting the apparent age of the equipment. Most of it was manual, but there were no hands to man it.

A ghost ship for true.

"All right," he said. His voice sounded flat and loud to him. "Come on out. You wanted me here—why are you hiding?"

Immediately there was a noise in the close, still air, a thin, electrical sigh. Then a quiet voice said, "You’re Brant Kittinger."

"Certainly," Brant said, swiveling fruitlessly toward the apparent source of the voice. "You know who I am. You couldn’t have found me by accident. Will you come out? I’ve no time to play games."

"I’m not playing games," the voice said calmly. "And I can’t come out, since I’m not hiding from you. I can’t see you; I needed to hear your voice before I could be sure of you."

"Why?"

"Because I can’t see inside the ship. I could find your observation boat well enough, but until I heard you speak I couldn’t be sure that you were the one aboard it. Now I know."

"All right," Brant said suspiciously. "I still don’t see why you’re hiding. Where are you?"

"Right here," said the voice. "All around you."

Brant looked all around himself. His scalp began to creep. "What kind of nonsense is that?" he said.

"You aren’t seeing what you’re looking at, Brant. You’re looking directly at me, no matter where you look. I am the ship."

"Oh," Brant said softly. "So that’s it. You’re one of Murray Bennett’s computer-driven ships. Are you the Astrid, after all?"

"This is the Astrid," the voice said. "But you miss my point. I am Murray Bennett, also." Brant’s jaw dropped open. "Where are you?" he said after a time.

"Here," the voice said impatiently. "I am the Astrid. I am also Murray Bennett. Bennett is dead, so he can’t very well come into the cabin and shake your hand. I am now Murray Bennett; I remember you very well, Brant. I need your help, so I sought you out. I’m not as much Murray Bennett as I’d like to be."

Brant sat down in the empty pilot’s seat.

"You’re a computer," he said shakily. "Isn’t that so?"

"It is and it isn’t. No computer can duplicate the performance of a human brain. I tried to introduce real human neural mechanisms into computers, specifically to fly ships, and was outlawed for my trouble. I don’t think I was treated fairly. It took enormous surgical skill to make the hundreds and hundreds of nerve-to-circuit connections that were needed—and before I was half through, the UN decided that what I was doing was human vivisection. They outlawed me, and the Foundation said I’d have to destroy myself; what could I do after that?

"I did destroy myself. I transferred most of my own nervous system into the computers of the Astrid, working at the end through drugged assistants under telepathic control, and finally relying upon the computers to seal the last connections. No such surgery ever existed before, but I brought it into existence. It worked. Now I’m the Astrid—and still Murray Bennett too, though Bennett is dead."

Brant locked his hands together carefully on the edge of the dead control board. "What good did that do you?" he said.

"It proved my point. I was trying to build an almost living spaceship. I had to build part of myself into it to do it—since they made me an outlaw to stop my using any other human being as a source of parts. But here is the Astrid, Brant, as almost alive as I could ask. I’m as immune to a dead spaceship—a UN cruiser, for instance—as you would be to an infuriated wheelbarrow. My reflexes are human-fast. I feel things directly, not through instruments. I fly myself: I am what I sought—the ship that almost thinks for itself."

"You keep saying ‘almost,’ " Brant said.

"That’s why I came to you," the voice said. "I don’t have enough of Murray Bennett here to know what I should do next. You knew me well. Was I out to try to use human brains more and more, and computer-mechanisms less and less? It seems to me that I was. I can pick up the brains easily enough, just as I picked you up. The solar system is full of people isolated on little research boats who could be plucked off them and incorporated into efficient machines like the Astrid. But I don’t know. I seem to have lost my creativity. I have a base where I have some other ships with beautiful computers in them, and with a few people to use as research animals I could make even better ships of them than the Astrid is. But is that what I want to do? Is that what I set out to do? I no longer know, Brant. Advise me."

The machine with the human nerves would have been touching had it not been so much like Bennett had been. The combination of the two was flatly horrible.

"You’ve made a bad job of yourself, Murray," he said. "You’ve let me inside your brain without taking any real thought of the danger. What’s to prevent me from stationing myself at your old manual controls and flying you to the nearest UN post?"

"You can’t fly a ship."

"How do you know?"

"By simple computation. And there are other reasons. What’s to prevent me from making you cut your own throat? The answer’s the same. You’re in control of your body; I’m in control of mine. My body is the Astrid. The controls are useless, unless I actuate them. The nerves through which I do so are sheathed in excellent steel. The only way in which you could destroy my control would be to break something necessary to the running of the ship. That, in a sense, would kill me, as destroying your heart or your lungs would kill you. But that would be pointless, for then you could no more navigate the ship than I. And if you made repairs, I would be—well, resurrected."

The voice fell silent a moment. Then it added, matter-of-factly, "Of course, I can protect myself." Brant made no reply. His eyes were narrowed to the squint he more usually directed at a problem in Milne transformations.

"I never sleep," the voice went on, "but much of my navigating and piloting is done by an autopilot without requiring my conscious attention. It is the same old Nelson autopilot which was originally on board the Astrid, though, so it has to be monitored. If you touch the controls while the autopilot is running, it switches itself off and I resume direction myself."

Brant was surprised and instinctively repelled by the steady flow of information. It was a forcible reminder of how much of the computer there was in the intelligence that called itself Murray Bennett. It was answering a question with the almost mindless wealth of detail of a public-library selector—and there was no "Enough" button for Brant to push.

"Are you going to answer my question?" the voice said suddenly.

"Yes, Brant said. "I advise you to turn yourself in. The Astrid proves your point—and also proves that your research was a blind alley. There’s no point in your proceeding to make more Astrids; you’re aware yourself that you’re incapable of improving on the model now."

"That’s contrary to what I have recorded," the voice said. "My ultimate purpose as a man was to build machines like this. I can’t accept your answer: it conflicts with my primary directive. Please follow the lights to your quarters."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Take you to the base."

"What for?" Brant said.

"As a stock of parts," said the voice. "Please follow the lights, or I’ll have to use force."

Brant followed the lights. As he entered the cabin to which they led him, a disheveled figure arose from one of the two cots. He started back in alarm. The figure chuckled wryly and displayed a frayed bit of gold braid on its sleeve.

"I’m not as terrifying as I look," he said. "Lt. Powell of the UN scout Iapetus, at your service."

"I’m Brant Kittinger, Planetary Institute astrophysicist. You’re just the faintest bit battered, all right. Did you tangle with Bennett?"

"Is that his name?" The UN patrolman nodded glumly. "Yes. There’s some whoppers of guns mounted on this old tub. I challenged it, and it cut my ship to pieces before I could lift a hand. I barely got into my suit in time—and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t."

"I don’t blame you. You know what he plans to use us for, I judge."

"Yes," the pilot said. "He seems to take pleasure in bragging about his achievements—God knows they’re, amazing enough, if even half of what he says is true."

"It’s all true," Brant said. "He’s essentially a machine, you know, and as such I doubt that he can lie."

Powell looked startled. "That makes it worse. I’ve been trying to figure a way out—"

Brant raised one hand sharply, and with the other he patted his pockets in search of a pencil. "If you’ve found anything, write it down, don’t talk about it. I think he can hear us. Is that so, Bennett?"

"Yes," said the voice in the air. Powell jumped. "My hearing extends throughout the ship." There was silence again. Powell, grim as death, scribbled on a tattered UN trip ticket.

Doesn’t matter. Can’t think of a thing.

Where’s the main computer? Brant wrote. There’s where personality residues must lie.

Down below. Not a chance without blaster. Must be eight inches of steel around it. Control nerves the same.

They sat hopelessly on the lower cot. Brant chewed on the pencil. "How far is his home base from here?" he asked at length.

"Where’s here?"

"In the orbit of the new planet."

Powell whistled. "In that case, his base can’t be more than three days away. I came on board from just off Titan, and he hasn’t touched his base since, so his fuel won’t last much longer. I know this type of ship well enough. And from what I’ve seen of the drivers, they haven’t been altered."

"Umm," Brant said. "That checks. If Bennett in person never got around to altering the drive, this ersatz Bennett we have here will never get around to it, either." He found it easier to ignore the listening presence while talking; to monitor his speech constantly with Bennett in mind was too hard on the nerves. "That gives us three days to get out, then. Or less."

For at least twenty minutes Brant said nothing more, while the UN pilot squirmed and watched his face hopefully. Finally the astronomer picked up the piece of paper again.

Can you pilot this ship? he wrote.

The pilot nodded and scribbled: Why?

Without replying, Brant lay back on the bunk, swiveled himself around so that his head was toward the center of the cabin, doubled up his knees, and let fly with both feet. They crashed hard against the hull, the magnetic studs in his shoes leaving bright scars on the metal. The impact sent him sailing like an ungainly fish across the cabin.

"What was that for?" Powell and the voice in the air asked simultaneously. Their captor’s tone was faintly curious, but not alarmed.

Brant had his answer already prepared. "It’s part of a question I want to ask," he said. He brought up against the far wall and struggled to get his feet back to the deck. "Can you tell me what I did then, Bennett?"

"Why, not specifically. As I told you, I can’t see inside the ship. But I get a tactual jar from the nerves of the controls, the lights, the floors, the ventilation system, and so on, and also a ringing sound from the audios. These things tell me that you either stamped on the floor or pounded on the wall. From the intensity of the impressions, I compute that you stamped."

"You hear and you feel, eh?"

"That’s correct," the voice said. "Also I can pick up your body heat from the receptors in the ship’s temperature control system—a form of seeing, but without any definition."

Very quietly, Brant retrieved the worn trip ticket and wrote on it: Follow me.

He went out into the corridor and started down it toward the control room, Powell at his heels. The living ship remained silent only for a moment.

"Return to your cabin," the voice said.

Brant walked a little faster. How would Bennett’s vicious brainchild enforce his orders?

"I said, go back to the cabin," the voice said. Its tone was now loud and harsh, and without a trace of feeling; for the first time, Brant was able to tell that it came from a voder, rather than from a tape-vocabulary of Bennett’s own voice. Brant gritted his teeth and marched forward. "I don’t want to have to spoil you," the voice said. "For the last time—"

An instant later Brant received a powerful blow in the small of his back. It felled him like a tree, and sent him skimming along the corridor deck like a flat stone. A bare fraction of a second later there was a hiss and a flash, and the air was abruptly hot and choking with the sharp odor of ozone.

"Close," Powell’s voice said calmly. "Some of these rivet-heads in the walls evidently are high-tension electrodes. Lucky I saw the nimbus collecting on that one. Crawl, and make it snappy."

Crawling in a gravity-free corridor was a good deal more difficult to manage than walking.

Determinedly, Brant squirmed into the control room, calling into play every trick he had ever learned in space to stick to the floor. He could hear Powell wriggling along behind him.

"He doesn’t know what I’m up to," Brant said aloud. "Do you, Bennett?"

"No," the voice in the air said. "But I know of nothing you can do that’s dangerous while you’re lying on your belly. When you get up, I’ll destroy you, Brant."

"Hmmm," Brant said. He adjusted his glasses, which he had nearly lost during his brief, skipping carom along the deck. The voice had summarized the situation with deadly precision. He pulled the now nearly pulped trip ticket out of his shirt pocket, wrote on it, and shoved it across the deck to Powell.

How can we reach the autopilot? Got to smash it.

Powell propped himself up on one elbow and studied the scrap of paper, frowning. Down below, beneath the deck, there was an abrupt sound of power, and Brant felt the cold metal on which he was lying sink beneath him. Bennett was changing course, trying to throw them within range of his defenses. Both men began to slide sidewise.

Powell did not appear to be worried; evidently he knew just how long it took to turn a ship of this size and period. He pushed the piece of paper back. On the last free space on it, in cramped letters, was: Throw something at it.

"Ah," said Brant. Still sliding, he drew off one of his heavy shoes and hefted it critically. It would do.

With a sudden convulsion of motion he hurled it.

Fat, crackling sparks crisscrossed the room; the noise was ear-splitting. While Bennett could have had no idea what Brant was doing, he evidently had sensed the sudden stir of movement and had triggered the high-tension current out of general caution. But he was too late. The flying shoe plowed heel-foremost into the autopilot with a rending smash.

There was an unfocused blare of sound from the voder more like the noise of a siren than like a human cry. The Astrid rolled wildly, once. Then there was silence.

"All right," said Brant, getting to his knees. "Try the controls, Powell."

The UN pilot arose cautiously. No sparks flew. When he touched the boards, the ship responded with an immediate purr of power.

"She runs," he said. "Now, how the hell did you know what to do?"

"It wasn’t difficult," Brant said complacently, retrieving his shoe. "But we’re not out of the woods yet. We have to get to the stores fast and find a couple of torches. I want to cut through every nerve-channel we can find. Are you with me?"

"Sure."

The job was more quickly done than Brant had dared to hope. Evidently the living ship had never thought of lightening itself by jettisoning all the equipment its human crew had once needed. While Brant and Powell cut their way enthusiastically through the jungle of efferent nerve-trunks running from the central computer, the astronomer said:

"He gave us too much information. He told me that he had connected the artificial nerves of the ship, the control nerves, to the nerve-ends running from the parts of his own brain that he had used. And he said that he’d had to make hundreds of such connections. That’s the trouble with allowing a computer to act as an independent agent—it doesn’t know enough about interpersonal relationships to control its tongue. There we are. He’ll be coming to before long, but I don’t think he’ll be able to interfere with us now."

He set down his torch with a sigh. "I was saying? Oh, yes. About those nerve connections: if he had separated out the pain-carrying nerves from the other sensory nerves, he would have had to have made thousands of connections, not hundreds. Had it really been the living human being, Bennett, who had given me that cue, I would have discounted it, because he might have been using understatement. But since it was Bennett’s double, a computer, I assumed that the figure was of the right order of magnitude. Computers don’t understate.

"Besides, I didn’t think Bennett could have made thousands of connections, especially not working telepathically through a proxy. There’s a limit even to the most marvelous neurosurgery. Bennett had just made general connections, and had relied on the segments from his own brain which he had incorporated to sort out the impulses as they came in—as any human brain could do under like circumstances. That was one of the advantages of using parts from a human brain in the first place."

"And when you kicked the wall—" Powell said.

"Yes, you see the crux of the problem already. When I kicked the wall, I wanted to make sure that he could feel the impact of my shoes. If he could, then I could be sure that he hadn’t eliminated the sensory nerves when he installed the motor nerves. And if he hadn’t, then there were bound to be pain axons present, too."

"But what has the autopilot to do with it?" Powell asked plaintively.

"The autopilot," Brant said, grinning, "is a center of his nerve-mesh, an important one. He should have protected it as heavily as he protected the main computer. When I smashed it, it was like ramming a fist into a man’s solar plexus. It hurt him."

Powell grinned too. "K.O.," he said.

I MADE YOU Walter M. Miller, Jr.

It had disposed of the enemy, and it was weary. It sat on the crag by night. Gaunt, frigid, wounded, it sat under the black sky and listened to the land with its feet, while only its dishlike ear moved in slow patterns that searched the surface of the land and the sky. The land was silent, airless. Nothing moved, except the feeble thing that scratched in the cave. It was good that nothing moved. It hated sound and motion. It was in its nature to hate them. About the thing in the cave, it could do nothing until dawn. The thing muttered in the rocks

"Help me! Are you all dead? Can’t you hear me? This is Sawyer. Sawyer calling anybody, Sawyer calling anybody—"

The mutterings were irregular, without pattern. It filtered them out, refusing to listen. All was seeping cold. The sun was gone, and there had been near-blackness for two hundred and fifty hours, except for the dim light of the sky-orb which gave no food, and the stars by which it told the time.

It sat wounded on the crag and expected the enemy. The enemy had come charging into the world out of the unworld during the late afternoon. The enemy had come brazenly, with neither defensive maneuvering nor offensive fire. It had destroyed them easily—first the big lumbering enemy that rumbled along on wheels, and then the small enemies that scurried away from the gutted hulk. It had picked them off one at a time, except for the one that crept into the cave and hid itself beyond a break in the tunnel.

It waited for the thing to emerge. From its vantage point atop the crag, it could scan broken terrain for miles around, the craters and crags and fissures, the barren expanse of dust-flat that stretched to the west, and the squarish outlines of the holy place near the tower that was the center of the world. The cave lay at the foot of a cliff to the southeast, only a thousand yards from the crag. It could guard the entrance to the cave with its small spitters, and there was no escape for the lingering trace of enemy.

It bore the mutterings of the hated thing even as it bore the pain of its wounds, patiently, waiting for a time of respite. For many sunrises there had been pain, and still the wounds were unrepaired. The wounds dulled some of its senses and crippled some of its activators. It could no longer follow the flickering beam of energy that would lead it safely into the unworld and across it to the place of creation. It could no longer blink out the pulses that reflected the difference between healer and foe. Now there was only foe.

"Colonel Aubrey, this is Sawyer. Answer me! I’m trapped in a supply cache. I think the others are dead. It blasted us as soon as we came near. Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Listen! I’ve got only one cylinder of oxygen left, you hear? Colonel, answer me!"

Vibrations in the rock, nothing more—only a minor irritant to disturb the blessed stasis of the world it guarded. The enemy was destroyed, except for the lingering trace in the cave. The lingering trace was neutralized however, and did not move.

Because of its wounds, it nursed a brooding anger. It could not stop the damage signals that kept firing from its wounded members, but neither could it accomplish the actions that the agonizing signals urged it to accomplish. It sat and suffered and hated on the crag.

It hated the night, for by night there was no food. Each day it devoured sun, strengthened itself for the long, long watch of darkness, but when dawn came, it was feeble again, and hunger was a fierce passion within. It was well, therefore, that there was peace in the night, that it might conserve itself and shield its bowels from the cold. If the cold penetrated the insulating layers, thermal receptors would begin firing warning signals, and agony would increase. There was much agony. And, except in time of battle, there was no pleasure except in devouring sun.

To protect the holy place, to restore stasis to the world, to kill enemy—these were the pleasures of battle. It knew them.

And it knew the nature of the world. It had learned every inch of land out to the pain perimeter, beyond which it could not move. And it had learned the surface features of the demiworld beyond, learned them by scanning with its long-range senses. The world, the demiworld, the unworld—these were Outside, constituting the universe.

"Help me, help me, help me! This is Captain John Harbin Sawyer, Autocyber Corps, Instruction and Programming Section, currently of Salvage Expedition Lunar-Sixteen. Isn’t anybody alive on the Moon? Listen! Listen to me! I’m sick. I’ve been here God knows how many days… in a suit. It stinks. Did you ever live in a suit for days? I’m sick. Get me out of here!"

The enemy’s place was unworld. If the enemy approached closer than the outer range, it must kill; this was a basic truth that it had known since the day of creation. Only the healers might move with impunity over all the land, but now the healers never came. It could no longer call them nor recognize them—because of the wound.

It knew the nature of itself. It learned of itself by introspecting damage, and by internal scanning. It alone was "being." All else was of the outside. It knew its functions, its skills, its limitations. It listened to the land with its feet. It scanned the surface with many eyes. It tested the skies with a flickering probe. In the ground, it felt the faint seisms and random noise. On the surface, it saw the faint glint of starlight, the heat-loss from the cold terrain, and the reflected pulses from the tower. In the sky, it saw only stars, and heard only the pulse-echo from the faint orb of Earth overhead. It suffered the gnawings of ancient pain, and waited for the dawn.

After an hour, the thing began crawling in the cave. It listened to the faint scraping sounds that came through the rocks. It lowered a more sensitive pickup and tracked the sounds. The remnant of enemy was crawling softly toward the mouth of the cave. It turned a small spitter toward the black scar at the foot of the Earthlit cliff. It fired a bright burst of tracers toward the cave, and saw them ricochet about the entrance in bright but noiseless streaks over the airless land.

"You dirty greasy deadly monstrosity, let me alone! You ugly juggernaut, I’m Sawyer. Don’t you remember? I helped to train you ten years ago. You were a rookie under me… heh heh! Just a dumb autocyber rookie… with the firepower of a regiment. Let me go. Let me go!"

The enemy-trace crawled toward the entrance again. And again a noiseless burst of machine-gun fire spewed about the cave, driving the enemy fragment back. More vibrations in the rock

"I’m your friend. The war’s over. It’s been over for months… Earthmonths. Don’t you get it, Grumbler? ‘Grumbler’—we used to call you that back in your rookie days—before we taught you how to kill. Grumbler. Mobile autocyber fire control. Don’t you know your pappy, son?"

The vibrations were an irritant. Suddenly angry, it wheeled around on the crag, gracefully maneuvering its massive bulk. Motors growling, it moved from the crag onto the hillside, turned again, and lumbered down the slope. It charged across the flatlands and braked to a halt fifty yards from the entrance to the cave. Dust geysers sprayed up about its caterpillars and fell like jets of water in the airless night. It listened again. All was silent in the cave.

"Go ’way, sonny," quavered the vibrations after a time. "Let pappy starve in peace."

It aimed the small spitter at the center of the black opening and hosed two hundred rounds of tracers into the cave. It waited. Nothing moved inside. It debated the use of radiation grenade, but its arsenal was fast depleting. It listened for a time, watching the cave, looming five times taller than the tiny flesh-thing that cowered inside. Then it turned and lumbered back across the flat to resume its watch from the crag. Distant motion, out beyond the limits of the demiworld, scratched feebly at the threshold of its awareness—but the motion was too remote to disturb.

The thing was scratching in the cave again.

"I’m punctured, do you hear? I’m punctured. A shard of broken rock. Just a small leak, but a slap-patch won’t hold. My suit! Aubrey from Sawyer, Aubrey from Sawyer. Base Control from Moonwagon Sixteen, message for you, over. He he. Gotta observe procedure. I got shot! I’m punctured. Help!"

The thing made whining sounds for a time, then: "All right, it’s only my leg. I’ll pump the boot full of water and freeze it. So I lose a leg. Whatthehell, take your time." The vibrations subsided into whining sounds again.

It settled again on the crag, its activators relaxing into a lethargy that was full of gnawing pain. Patiently it awaited the dawn.

The movement toward the south was increasing. The movement nagged at the outer fringes of the demiworld, until at last the movement became an irritant. Silently, a drill slipped down from its belly. The drill gnawed deep into the rock, then retracted. It slipped a sensitive pickup into the drill hole and listened carefully to the ground.

A faint purring in the rocks—mingled with the whining from the cave.

It compared the purring with recorded memories. It remembered similar purrings. The sound came from a rolling object far to the south. It tried to send the pulses that asked "Are you friend or foe," but the sending organ was inoperative. The movement, therefore, was enemy—but still beyond range of its present weapons.

Lurking anger, and expectation of battle. It stirred restlessly on the crag, but kept its surveillance of the cave. Suddenly there was disturbance on a new sensory channel, vibrations similar to those that came from the cave; but this time the vibrations came across the surface, through the emptiness, transmitted in the long-wave spectra.

"Moonwagon Sixteen from Command Runabout, give us a call. Over."

Then silence. It expected a response from the cave, at first—since it knew that one unit of enemy often exchanged vibratory patterns with another unit of enemy. But no answer came. Perhaps the long-wave energy could not penetrate the cave to reach the thing that cringed inside.

"Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. What the devil happened to you? Can you read me? Over!"

Tensely it listened to the ground. The purring stopped for a time as the enemy paused. Minutes later, the motion resumed.

It awoke an emissary ear twenty kilometers to the southwest, and commanded the ear to listen, and to transmit the patterns of the purring noise. Two soundings were taken, and from them, it derived the enemy’s precise position and velocity. The enemy was proceeding to the north, into the edge of the demiworld. Lurking anger flared into active fury. It gunned its engines on the crag. It girded itself for battle.

"Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. I assume your radio rig is unoperative. If you can hear us, get this: we’re proceeding north to five miles short of magnapult range. We’ll stop there and fire an autocyb rocket into zone Red-Red. The warhead’s a radio-to-sonar transceiver. If you’ve got a seismitter that’s working, the transceiver will act as a relay stage. Over."

It ignored the vibratory pattern and rechecked its battle gear. It introspected its energy storage, and tested its weapon activators. It summoned an emissary eye and waited a dozen minutes while the eye crawled crablike from the holy place to take up a watch-post near the entrance of the cave. If the enemy remnant tried to emerge, the emissary eye would see, and report, and it could destroy the enemy remnant with a remote grenade catapult.

The purring in the ground was louder. Having prepared itself for the fray, it came down from the crag and grumbled southward at cruising speed. It passed the gutted hulk of the Moonwagon, with its team of overturned tractors. The detonation of the magnapult canister had broken the freightcar sized vehicle in half. The remains of several two-legged enemy appurtenances were scattered about the area, tiny broken things in the pale Earthlight. Grumbler ignored them and charged relentlessly southward.

A sudden wink of light on the southern horizon! Then a tiny dot of flame arced upward, traversing the heavens. Grumbler skidded to a halt and tracked its path. A rocket missile. It would fall somewhere in the east half of zone Red-Red. There was no time to prepare to shoot it down. Grumbler waited—and saw that the missile would explode harmlessly in a nonvital area.

Seconds later, the missile paused in flight, reversing direction and sitting on its jets. It dropped out of sight behind an outcropping. There was no explosion. Nor was there any activity in the area where the missile had fallen. Grumbler called an emissary ear, sent it migrating toward the impact point to listen, then continued South toward the pain perimeter.

"Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout," came the long-wave vibrations. "We just shot the radio-seismitter relay into Red-Red. If you’re within five miles of it, you should be able to hear."

Almost immediately, a response from the cave, heard by the emissary ear that listened to the land near the tower: "Thank God! He he he he—Oh, thank God!"

And simultaneously, the same vibratory pattern came in long-wave patterns from the direction of the missile-impact point. Grumbler stopped again, momentarily confused, angrily tempted to lob a magnapult canister across the broken terrain toward the impact point. But the emissary ear reported no physical movement from the area. The enemy to the south was the origin of the disturbances. If it removed the major enemy first, it could remove the minor disturbances later. It moved on to the pain perimeter, occasionally listening to the meaningless vibrations caused by the enemy.

"Salvage Sixteen from Aubrey. I hear you faintly. Who is this, Carhill?"

"Aubrey! A voice —A real voice—Or am I going nuts?"

"Sixteen from Aubrey, Sixteen from Aubrey. Stop babbling and tell me who’s talking. What’s happening in there? Have you got Grumbler immobilized?"

Spasmodic choking was the only response.

"Sixteen from Aubrey. Snap out of it! Listen, Sawyer, I know it’s you. Now get hold of yourself, man! What’s happened?"

"Dead… they’re all dead but me."

"STOP THAT IDIOTIC LAUGHING!"

A long silence, then, scarcely audible: "O.K., I’ll hold onto myself. Is it really you, Aubrey?"

"You’re not having hallucinations, Sawyer. We’re crossing zone Red in a runabout. Now tell me the situation. We’ve been trying to call you for days."

"Grumbler let us get ten miles into zone Red-Red, and then he clobbered us with a magnapult canister."

"Wasn’t your I.F.F. working?"

"Yes, but Grumbler’s isn’t. After he blasted the wagon, he picked off the other four that got out alive—He he he he… Did you ever see a Sherman tank chase a mouse, colonel?"

"Cut it out, Sawyer! Another giggle out of you, and I’ll flay you alive."

"Get me out! My leg! Get me out!"

"If we can. Tell me your present situation."

"My suit… I got a small puncture—Had to pump the leg full of water and freeze it. Now my leg’s dead. I can’t last much longer."

"The situation, Sawyer, the situation! Not your aches and pains."

The vibrations continued, but Grumbler screened them out for a time. There was rumbling fury on an Earthlit hill.

It sat with its engines idling, listening to the distant movements of the enemy to the south. At the foot of the hill lay the pain perimeter; even upon the hilltop, it felt the faint twinges of warning that issued from the tower, thirty kilometers to the rear at the center of the world. It was in communion with the tower. If it ventured beyond the perimeter, the communion would slip out-of-phase, and there would be blinding pain and detonation.

The enemy was moving more slowly now, creeping north across the demi- world. It would be easy to destroy the enemy at once, if only the supply of rocket missiles were not depleted. The range of the magnapult hurler was only twenty-five kilometers. The small spitters would reach, but their accuracy was close to zero at such range. It would have to wait for the enemy to come closer. It nursed a brooding fury on the hill.

"Listen, Sawyer, if Grumbler’s I.F.F. isn’t working, why hasn’t he already fired on this runabout?"

"That’s what sucked us in too, Colonel. We came into zone Red and nothing happened. Either he’s out of long-range ammo, or he’s getting cagey, or both. Probably both."

"Mmmp! Then we’d better park here and figure something out."

"Listen… there’s only one thing you can do. Call for a telecontrolled missile from the Base."

"To destroy Grumbler? You’re out of your head, Sawyer. If Grumbler’s knocked out, the whole area around the excavations gets blown sky high… to keep them out of enemy hands. You know that."

"You expect me to care?"

"Stop screaming, Sawyer. Those excavations are the most valuable property on the Moon. We can’t afford to lose them. That’s why Grumbler was staked out. If they got blown to rubble, I’d be court-martialed before the debris quit falling."

The response was snarling and sobbing. "Eight hours oxygen. Eight hours, you hear? You stupid, merciless—"

The enemy to the south stopped moving at a distance of twenty-eight kilometers from Grumbler’s hill—only three thousand meters beyond magnapult range.

A moment of berserk hatred. It lumbered to-and-fro in a frustrated pattern that was like a monstrous dance, crushing small rocks beneath its treads, showering dust into the valley. Once it charged down toward the pain perimeter, and turned back only after the agony became unbearable. It stopped again on the hill, feeling the weariness of lowered energy supplies in the storage units.

It paused to analyze. It derived a plan.

Gunning its engines, it wheeled slowly around on the hilltop, and glided down the northern slope at a stately pace. It sped northward for half a mile across the flatland, then slowed to a crawl and maneuvered its massive bulk into a fissure, where it had cached an emergency store of energy. The battery-trailer had been freshly charged before the previous sundown. It backed into feeding position and attached the supply cables without hitching itself to the trailer.

It listened occasionally to the enemy while it drank hungrily from the energy-store, but the enemy remained motionless. It would need every erg of available energy in order to accomplish its plan. It drained the cache. Tomorrow, when the enemy was gone, it would drag the trailer back to the main feeders for recharging, when the sun rose to drive the generators once again. It kept several caches of energy at strategic positions throughout its domain, that it might never be driven into starved inability to act during the long lunar night. It kept its own house in order, dragging the trailers back to be recharged at regular intervals.

"I don’t know what I can do for you, Sawyer," came the noise of the enemy. "We don’t dare destroy Grumbler, and there’s not another autocyber crew on the Moon. I’ll have to call Terra for replacements. I can’t send men into zone Red-Red if Grumbler’s running berserk. It’d be murder."

"For the love of God, Colonel—"

"Listen, Sawyer, you’re the autocyber man. You helped train Grumbler. Can’t you think of some way to stop him without detonating the mined area?"

A protracted silence. Grumbler finished feeding and came out of the fissure. It moved westward a few yards, so that a clear stretch of flat land lay between itself and the hill at the edge of the pain perimeter, half a mile away. There it paused, and awoke several emissary ears, so that it might derive the most accurate possible fix of the enemy’s position. One by one, the emissary ears reported.

"Well, Sawyer?"

"My leg’s killing me."

"Can’t you think of anything?"

"Yeah—but it won’t do me any good. I won’t live that long."

"Well, let’s hear it."

"Knock out his remote energy storage units, and then run him ragged at night."

"How long would it take?"

"Hours—after you found all his remote supply units and blasted them."

It analyzed the reports of the emissary ears, and calculated a precise position. The enemy runabout was 2.7 kilometers beyond the maximum range of the magnapult—as creation had envisioned the maximum. But creation was imperfect, even inside.

It loaded a canister onto the magnapult’s spindle. Contrary to the intentions of creation, it left the canister locked to the loader. This would cause pain. But it would prevent the canister from moving during the first few microseconds after the switch was closed, while the magnetic field was still building toward full strength. It would not release the canister until the field clutched it fiercely and with full effect, thus imparting slightly greater energy to the canister. This procedure it had invented for itself, thus transcending creation.

"Well, Sawyer, if you can’t think of anything else—"

"I DID THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE!" the answering vibrations screamed. "Call for a telecontrolled missile! Can’t you understand, Aubrey? Grumbler murdered eight men from your command."

"You taught him how, Sawyer."

There was a long and ominous silence. On the flat land to the north of the hill, Grumbler adjusted the elevation of the magnapult slightly, keyed the firing switch to a gyroscope, and prepared to charge. Creation had calculated the maximum range when the weapon was at a standstill.

"He he he he he—" came the patterns from the thing in the cave.

It gunned its engines and clutched the drive-shafts. It rolled toward the hill, gathering speed, and its mouth was full of death. Motors strained and howled. Like a thundering bull, it rumbled toward the south. It hit maximum velocity at the foot of the slope. It lurched sharply upward. As the magnapult swept up to correct elevation, the gyroscope closed the circuit.

A surge of energy. The clenching fist of the field gripped the canister, tore it free of the loader, hurled it high over the broken terrain toward the enemy. Grumbler skidded to a halt on the hilltop.

"Listen, Sawyer, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing—"

The enemy’s voice ended with a dull snap. A flare of light came briefly from the southern horizon, and died. "He he he he he—" said the thing in the cave.

Grumbler paused.

THRRRUMMMP! came the shocking wave through the rocks.

Five emissary ears relayed their recordings of the detonation from various locations. It studied them, it analyzed. The detonation had occurred less than fifty meters from the enemy runabout. Satiated, it wheeled around lazily on the hilltop and rolled northward toward the center of the world. All was well.

"Aubrey, you got cut off," grunted the thing in the cave. "Call me, you coward… call me. I want to make certain you hear."

Grumbler, as a random action, recorded the meaningless noise of the thing in the cave, studied the noise, rebroadcast it on the long-wave frequency: "Aubrey, you got cut off. Call me, you coward… call me. I want to make certain you hear."

The seismitter caught the long-wave noise and reintroduced it as vibration in the rocks.

The thing screamed in the cave. Grumbler recorded the screaming noise, and rebroadcast it several times.

"Aubrey… Aubrey, where are you… AUBREY! Don’t desert me don’t leave me here—"

The thing in the cave became silent.

It was a peaceful night. The stars glared unceasingly from the blackness and the pale terrain was haunted by Earthlight from the dim crescent in the sky. Nothing moved. It was good that nothing moved. The holy place was at peace in the airless world. There was blessed stasis.

Only once did the thing stir again in the cave. So slowly that Grumbler scarcely heard the sound, it crawled to the entrance and lay peering up at the steel behemoth on the crag.

It whispered faintly in the rocks. "I made you, don’t you understand? I’m human. I made you—"

Then with one leg dragging behind, it pulled itself out into the Earthglow and turned as if to look up at the dim crescent in the sky. Gathering fury, Grumbler stirred on the crag, and lowered the black maw of a grenade launcher.

"I made you," came the meaningless noise.

It hated noise and motion. It was in its nature to hate them. Angrily, the grenade launcher spoke. And then there was blessed stasis for the rest of the night.

THE BELL-TOWER Herman Melville

In the south of Europe, nigh a once frescoed capital, now with dank mold cankering its bloom, central in a plain, stands what, at distance, seems the black mossed stump of some immeasurable pine, fallen, in forgotten days, with Anak and the Titan.

As all along where the pine tree falls, its dissolution leaves a mossy mound —last-flung shadow of the perished trunk; never lengthening, never lessening; unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun; shade immutable, and true gauge which cometh by prostration—so westward from what seems the stump, one steadfast spear of lichened ruin veins the plain.

From that treetop, what birded chimes of silver throats had rung. A stone pine, a metallic aviary in its crown: the Bell-Tower, built by the great mechanician, the unblest foundling, Bannadonna.

Like Babel’s, its base was laid in a high hour of renovated earth, following the second deluge, when the waters of the Dark Ages had dried up and once more the green appeared. No wonder that, after so long and deep submersion, the jubilant expectation of the race should, as with Noah’s sons, soar into Shinar aspiration.

In firm resolve, no man in Europe at that period went beyond Bannadonna. Enriched through commerce with the Levant, the state in which he lived voted to have the noblest Bell-Tower in Italy. His repute assigned him to be architect.

Stone by stone, month by month, the tower rose. Higher, higher, snail-like in pace, but torch or rocket in its pride.

After the masons would depart, the builder, standing alone upon its ever-ascending summit at close of every day, saw that he overtopped still higher walls and trees. He would tarry till a late hour there, wrapped in schemes of other and still loftier piles. Those who of saints’ days thronged the spot—hanging to the rude poles of scaffolding like sailors on yards or bees on boughs, unmindful of lime and dust, and falling chips of stone—their homage not the less inspirited him to self-esteem.

At length the holiday of the Tower came. To the sound of viols, the climax-stone slowly rose in air, and, amid the firing of ordnance, was laid by Bannadonna’s hands upon the final course. Then mounting it, he stood erect, alone, with folded arms, gazing upon the white summits of blue inland Alps, and whiter crests of bluer Alps offshore—sights invisible from the plain. Invisible, too, from thence was that eye he turned below, when, like the cannon booms, came up to him the people’s combustions of applause.

That which stirred them so was seeing with what serenity the builder stood three hundred feet in air, upon an unrailed perch. This none but he durst do. But his periodic standing upon the pile, in each stage of its growth—such discipline had its last result.

Little remained now but the bells. These, in all respects, must correspond with their receptacle.

The minor ones were prosperously cast. A highly enriched one followed, of a singular make, intended for suspension in a manner before unknown. The purpose of this bell, its rotary motion and connection with the clockwork, also executed at the time, will, in the sequel, receive mention.

In the one erection, bell-tower and clock-tower were united, though, before that period, such structures had commonly been built distinct; as the Campanile and Torre del Orologio of St. Mark to this day attest.

But it was upon the great state bell that the founder lavished his more daring skill. In vain did some of the less elated magistrates here caution him, saying that though truly the tower was titanic, yet limit should be set to the dependent weight of its swaying masses. But, undeterred, he prepared his mammoth mold, dented with mythological devices; kindled his fires of balsamic firs; melted his tin and copper, and, throwing in much plate contributed by the public spirit of the nobles, let loose the tide.

The unleashed metals bayed like hounds. The workmen shrunk. Through their fright, fatal harm to the bell was dreaded. Fearless as Shadrach, Bannadonna, rushing through the glow, smote the chief culprit with his ponderous ladle. From the smitten part, a splinter was dashed into the seething mass, and at once was melted in.

Next day a portion of the work was heedfully uncovered. All seemed right. Upon the third morning, with equal satisfaction, it was bared still lower. At length, like some old Theban king, the whole cooled casting was disinterred. All was fair except in one strange spot. But as he suffered no one to attend him in these inspections, he concealed the blemish by some preparation which none knew better to devise.

The casting of such a mass was deemed no small triumph for the caster; one, too, in which the state might not scorn to share. The homicide was overlooked. By the charitable that deed was but imputed to sudden transports of esthetic passion, not to any flagitious quality. A kick from an Arabian charger; not sign of vice, but blood.

His felony remitted by the judge, absolution given him by the priest, what more could even a sickly conscience have desired.

Honoring the tower and its builder with another holiday, the republic witnessed the hoisting of the bells and clockwork amid shows and pomps superior to the former.

Some months of more than usual solitude on Bannadonna’s part ensued. It was not unknown that he was engaged upon something for the belfry, intended to complete it and surpass all that had gone before. Most people imagined that the design would involve a casting like the bells. But those who thought they had some further insight would shake their heads, with hints that not for nothing did the mechanician keep so secret. Meantime, his seclusion failed not to invest his work with more or less of that sort of mystery pertaining to the forbidden.

Erelong he had a heavy object hoisted to the belfry, wrapped in a dark sack or cloak—a procedure sometimes had in the case of an elaborate piece of sculpture, or statue, which, being intended to grace the front of a new edifice, the architect does not desire exposed to critical eyes till set up, finished, in its appointed place. Such was the impression now. But, as the object rose, a statuary present observed, or thought he did, that it was not entirely rigid, but was, in a manner, pliant. At last, when the hidden thing had attained its final height, and, obscurely seen from below, seemed almost of itself to step into the belfry, as if with little assistance from the crane, a shrewd old blacksmith present ventured the suspicion that it was but a living man. This surmise was thought a foolish one, while the general interest failed not to augment.

Not without demur from Bannadonna, the chief magistrate of the town, with an associate—both elderly men—followed what seemed the image up the tower. But, arrived at the belfry, they had little recompense. Plausibly entrenching himself behind the conceded mysteries of his art, the mechanician withheld present explanation. The magistrates glanced toward the cloaked object, which, to their surprise, seemed now to have changed its attitude, or else had before been more perplexingly concealed by the violent muffling action of the wind without. It seemed now seated upon some sort of frame, or chair, contained within the domino. They observed that nigh the top, in a sort of square, the web of the cloth, either from accident or design, had its warp partly withdrawn, and the cross threads plucked out here and there, so as to form a sort of woven grating. Whether it were the low wind or no, stealing through the stone latticework, or only their own perturbed imaginations, is uncertain, but they thought they discerned a slight sort of fitful, springlike motion in the domino. Nothing, however incidental or insignificant, escaped their uneasy eyes. Among other things, they pried out, in a corner, an earthen cup, partly corroded and partly encrusted, and one whispered to the other that this cup was just such a one as might, in mockery, be offered to the lips of some brazen statue, or, perhaps, still worse.

But, being questioned, the mechanician said that the cup was simply used in his founder’s business, and described the purpose—in short, a cup to test the condition of metals in fusion. He added that it had got into the belfry by the merest chance.

Again and again they gazed at the domino, as at some suspicious incognito at a Venetian mask. All sorts of vague apprehensions stirred them. They even dreaded lest, when they should descend, the mechanician, though without a flesh-and-blood companion, for all that, would not be left alone.

Affecting some merriment at their disquietude, he begged to relieve them, by extending a coarse sheet of workman’s canvas between them and the object.

Meantime he sought to interest them in his other work, nor, now that the domino was out of sight, did they long remain insensible to the artistic wonders lying round them—wonders hitherto beheld but in their unfinished state, because, since hoisting the bells, none but the caster had entered within the belfry. It was one trait of his, that, even in details, he would not let another do what he could, without too great loss of time, accomplish for himself. So, for several preceding weeks, whatever hours were unemployed in his secret design had been devoted to elaborating the figures on the bells.

The clock bell, in particular, now drew attention. Under a patient chisel, the latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the cloudings incident to casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now revealed. Round and round the bell, twelve figures of gay girls, garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral ring the embodied hours.

"Bannadonna," said the chief, "this bell excels all else. No added touch could here improve. Hark!" hearing a sound, "was that the wind?"

"The wind, Excellenza," was the light response. "But the figures, they are not yet without their faults. They need some touches yet. When those are given, and the—block yonder," pointing towards the canvas screen, "when Haman there, as I merrily call him—him? it, I mean—when Haman is fixed on this, his lofty tree, then, gentlemen, will I be most happy to receive you here again."

The equivocal reference to the object caused some return of restlessness. However, on their part, the visitors forbore further allusion to it, unwilling, perhaps, to let the foundling see how easily it lay within his plebeian art to stir the placid dignity of nobles.

"Well, Bannadonna," said the chief, "how long ere you are ready to set the clock going, so that the hour shall be sounded? Our interest in you, not less than in the work itself, makes us anxious to be assured of your success. The people, too—why, they are shouting now. Say the exact hour when you will be ready."

"Tomorrow, Excellenza, if you listen for it—or should you not, all the same—strange music will be heard. The stroke of one shall be the first from yonder bell," pointing to the bell adorned with girls and garlands, "that stroke shall fall there, where the hand of Una clasps Dua’s. The stroke of one shall sever that loved clasp. Tomorrow, then, at one o’clock, as struck here, precisely here," advancing and placing his finger upon the clasp, "the poor mechanic will be most happy once more to give you liege audience, in this his littered shop. Farewell till then, illustrious magnificoes, and hark ye for your vassal’s stroke."

His still, Vulcanic face hiding its burning brightness like a forge, he moved with ostentatious deference towards the scuttle, as if so far to escort their exit. But the junior magistrate, a kind-hearted man, troubled at what seemed to him a certain sardonical disdain lurking beneath the foundling’s humble mien, and in Christian sympathy more distressed at it on his account than on his own, dimly surmising what might be the final fate of such a cynic solitaire, nor perhaps uninfluenced by the general strangeness of surrounding things, this good magistrate had glanced sadly, sideways from the speaker, and thereupon his foreboding eye had started at the expression of the unchanging face of the Hour Una.

"How is this, Bannadonna," he lowly asked, "Una looks unlike her sisters."

"In Christ’s name, Bannadonna," impulsively broke in the chief, his attention for the first attracted to the figure by his associate’s remark. "Una’s face looks just like that of Deborah, the prophetess, as painted by the Florentine, Del Fonca."

"Surely, Bannadonna," lowly resumed the milder magistrate, "you meant the twelve should wear the same jocundly abandoned air. But see, the smile of Una seems but a fatal one. ’Tis different."

While his mild associate was speaking, the chief glanced inquiringly from him to the caster, as if anxious to mark how the discrepancy would be accounted for. As the chief stood, his advanced foot was on the scuttle’s curb.

Bannadonna spoke:

"Excellenza, now that, following your keener eye, I glance upon the face of Una, I do, indeed perceive some little variance. But look all round the bell, and you will find no two faces entirely correspond. Because there is a law in art—but the cold wind is rising more; these lattices are but a poor defense. Suffer me, magnificoes, to conduct you at least partly on your way. Those in whose well-being there is a public stake, should be heedfully attended."

"Touching the look of Una, you were saying, Bannadonna, that there was a certain law in art," observed the chief, as the three now descended the stone shaft, "pray, tell me, then—"

"Pardon; another time, Excellenza—the tower is damp."

"Nay, I must rest, and hear it now. Here,—here is a wide landing, and through this leeward slit, no wind, but ample light. Tell us of your law, and at large."

"Since, Excellenza, you insist, know that there is a law in art which bars the possibility of duplicates. Some years ago, you may remember, I graved a small seal for your republic, bearing, for its chief device, the head of your own ancestor, its illustrious founder. It becoming necessary, for the customs’ use, to have innumerable impressions for bales and boxes, I graved an entire plate, containing one hundred of the seals. Now, though, indeed, my object was to have those hundred heads identical, and though, I dare say, people think them so, yet, upon closely scanning an uncut impression from the plate, no two of those five-score faces, side by side, will be found alike. Gravity is the air of all, but diversified in all. In some, benevolent; in some, ambiguous; in two or three, to a close scrutiny, all but incipiently malign, the variation of less than a hair’s breadth in the linear shadings round the mouth sufficing to all this. Now, Excellenza, transmute that general gravity into joyousness, and subject it to twelve of those variations I have described, and tell me, will you not have my hours here, and Una one of them? But I like—"

"Hark! is that—a footfall above?"

"Mortar, Excellenza; sometimes it drops to the belfry floor from the arch where the stonework was left undressed. I must have it seen to. As I was about to say: for one, I like this law forbidding duplicates. It evokes fine personalities. Yes, Excellenza, that strange, and—to you—uncertain smile, and those forelooking eyes of Una, suit Bannadonna very well."

"Hark!—sure we left no soul above?"

"No soul, Excellenza, rest assured, no soul.—Again the mortar."

"It fell not while we were there."

"Ah, in your presence, it better knew its place, Excellenza," blandly bowed Bannadonna.

"But Una," said the milder magistrate, "she seemed intently gazing on you; one would have almost sworn that she picked you out from among us three."

"If she did, possibly it might have been her finer apprehension, Excellenza."

"How, Bannadonna? I do not understand you."

"No consequence, no consequence, Excellenza—but the shifted wind is blowing through the slit. Suffer me to escort you on, and then, pardon, but the toiler must to his tools."

"It may be foolish, signor," and the milder magistrate, as, from the third landing, the two now went down unescorted, "but, somehow, our great mechanician moves me strangely. Why, just now, when he so superciliously replied, his walk seemed Sisera’s, God’s vain foe, in Del Fonca’s painting. And that young, sculptured Deborah, too. Aye, and that—"

"Tush, tush, signor!" returned the chief. "A passing whim. Deborah?—Where’s Jael, pray?"

"Ah," said the other, as they now stepped upon the sod, "ah, signor, I see you leave your fears behind you with the chill and gloom; but mine, even in this sunny air, remain. Hark!"

It was a sound from just within the tower door, whence they had emerged. Turning, they saw it closed.

"He has slipped down and barred us out," smiled the chief; "but it is his custom."

Proclamation was now made that the next day, at one hour after meridian, the clock would strike, and—thanks to the mechanician’s powerful art—with unusual accompaniments. But what those should be, none as yet could say. The announcement was received with cheers.

By the looser sort, who encamped about the tower all night, lights were seen gleaming through the topmost blindwork, only disappearing with the morning sun. Strange sounds, too, were heard, or were thought to be, by those whom anxious watching might not have left mentally undisturbed—sounds, not only of some ringing implement, but also, so they said, half-suppressed screams and plainings, such as might have issued from some ghostly engine overplied.

Slowly the day drew on, part of the concourse chasing the weary time with songs and games, till, at last, the great blurred sun rolled, like a football, against the plain.

At noon, the nobility and principal citizens came from the town in cavalcade, a guard of soldiers, also, with music, the more to honor the occasion.

Only one hour more. Impatience grew. Watches were held in hands of feverish men, who stood, now scrutinizing their small dial-plates, and then, with neck thrown back, gazing toward the belfry as if the eve might foretell that which could only be made sensible to the ear, for, as yet, there was no dial to the tower clock.

The hour hands of a thousand watches now verged within a hair’s breadth of the figure 1. A silence, as of the expectations of some Shiloh, pervaded the swarming plain. Suddenly a dull, mangled sound, naught ringing in it, scarcely audible, indeed, to the outer circles of the people—that dull sound dropped heavily from the belfry. At the same moment, each man stared at his neighbor blankly. All watches were upheld. All hour hands were at—had passed—the figure 1. No bell stroke from the tower. The multitude became tumultuous.

Waiting a few moments, the chief magistrate, commanding silence, hailed the belfry to know what thing unforeseen had happened there.

No response.

He hailed again and yet again.

All continued hushed.

By his order, the soldiers burst in the tower door, when, stationing guards to defend it from the now surging mob, the chief, accompanied by his former associate, climbed the winding stairs. Halfway up, they stopped to listen. No sound. Mounting faster, they reached the belfry, but, at the threshold, started at the spectacle disclosed. A spaniel, which, unbeknown to them, had followed them thus far, stood shivering as before some unknown monster in a brake, or, rather, as if it snuffed footsteps leading to some other world.

Bannadonna lay, prostrate and bleeding, at the base of the bell which was adorned with girls and garlands. He lay at the feet of the hour Una, his head coinciding, in a vertical line, with her left hand, clasped by the hour Dua. With downcast face impending over him, like Jael over nailed Sisera in the tent, was the domino; now no more becloaked.

It had limbs, and seemed clad in a scaly mail, lustrous as a dragon-beetle’s. It was manacled, and its clubbed arms were uplifted, as if, with its manacles, once more to smite its already smitten victim. One advanced foot of it was inserted beneath the dead body, as if in the act of spurning it.

Uncertainty falls on what now followed.

It were but natural to suppose that the magistrates would, at first, shrink from immediate personal contact with what they saw. At the least, for a time, they would stand in involuntary doubt, it may be, in more or less horrified alarm. Certain it is that an arquebuss was called for from below. And some add that its report, followed by a fierce whiz, as of the sudden snapping of a mainspring, with a steely din, as if a stack of sword blades should be dashed upon a pavement; these blended sounds came ringing to the plain, attracting every eye far upward to the belfry, whence, through the latticework, thin wreaths of smoke were curling.

Some averred that it was the spaniel, gone mad by fear, which was shot. This, others denied. True it was, the spaniel never more was seen; and, probably for some unknown reason, it shared the burial now to be related of the domino. For, whatever the preceding circumstances may have been, the first instinctive panic over, or else all ground of reasonable fear removed, the two magistrates, by themselves, quickly re-hooded the figure in the dropped cloak wherein it had been hoisted. The same night, it was secretly lowered to the ground, smuggled to the beach, pulled far out to sea, and sunk. Nor to any after urgency, even in free convivial hours, would the twain ever disclose the full secrets of the belfry.

From the mystery unavoidably investing it, the popular solution of the foundling’s fate involved more or less of supernatural agency. But some few less unscientific minds pretended to find little difficulty in otherwise accounting for it. In the chain of circumstantial inferences drawn, there may or may not have been some absent or defective links. But, as the explanation in question is the only one which tradition has explicitly preserved, in dearth of better, it will here be given. But, in the first place, it is requisite to present the supposition entertained as to the entire motive and mode, with their origin, of the secret design of Bannadonna, the minds above-mentioned assuming to penetrate as well into his soul as into the event. The disclosure will indirectly involve reference to peculiar matters, none of the clearest, beyond the immediate subject.

At that period, no large bell was made to sound otherwise than as at present, by agitation of a tongue within by means of ropes, or percussion from without, either from cumbrous machinery, or stalwart watchmen, armed with heavy hammers, stationed in the belfry or in sentry boxes on the open roof, according as the bell was sheltered or exposed.

It was from observing these exposed bells, with their watchmen, that the foundling, as was opined, derived the first suggestion of his scheme. Perched on a great mast or spire, the human figure, viewed from below, undergoes such a reduction in its apparent size as to obliterate its intelligent features. It evinces no personality. Instead of bespeaking volition, its gestures rather resemble the automatic ones of the arms of a telegraph.

Musing, therefore, upon the purely Punchinello aspect of the human figure thus beheld, it had indirectly occurred to Bannadonna to devise some metallic agent which should strike the hour with its mechanic hand, with even greater precision than the vital one. And, moreover, as the vital watchman on the roof, sallying from his retreat at the given periods, walked to the bell with uplifted mace to smite it, Bannadonna had resolved that his invention should likewise possess the power of locomotion, and, along with that, the appearance, at least, of intelligence and will.

If the conjectures of those who claimed acquaintance with the intent of Bannadonna be thus far correct, no unenterprising spirit could have been his. But they stopped not here; intimating that though, indeed, his design had, in the first place, been prompted by the sight of the watchman, and confined to the devising of a subtle substitute for him, yet, as is not seldom the case with projectors, by insensible gradations proceeding from comparatively pigmy aims to titanic ones, the original scheme had, in its anticipated eventualities, at last attained to an unheard-of degree of daring. He still bent his efforts upon the locomotive figure for the belfry, but only as a partial type of an ulterior creature, a sort of elephantine helot, adapted to further, in a degree scarcely to be imagined, the universal conveniences and glories of humanity; supplying nothing less than a supplement to the Six Days’ Work; stocking the earth with a new serf, more useful than the ox, swifter than the dolphin, stronger than the lion, more cunning than the ape, for industry an ant, more fiery than serpents, and yet, in patience, another ass. All excellences of all God-made creatures which served man were here to receive advancement, and then to be combined in one. Talus was to have been the all-accomplished helot’s name. Talus, iron slave to Bannadonna, and, through him, to man.

Here, it might well be thought that, were these last conjectures as to the foundling’s secrets not erroneous, then must he have been hopelessly infected with the craziest chimeras of his age; far outgoing Albert Magus and Cornelius Agrippa. But the contrary was averred. However marvelous his design, however apparently transcending not alone the bounds of human invention, but those of divine creation, yet the proposed means to be employed were alleged to have been confined within the sober forms of sober reason. It was affirmed that, to a degree of more than skeptic scorn, Bannadonna had been without sympathy for any of the vainglorious irrationalities of his time. For example, he had not concluded, with the visionaries among the metaphysicians, that between the finer mechanic forces and the ruder animal vitality some germ of correspondence might prove discoverable. As little did his scheme partake of the enthusiasm of some natural philosophers, who hoped, by physiological and chemical inductions, to arrive at a knowledge of the source of life, and so qualify themselves to manufacture and improve upon it. Much less had he aught in common with the tribe of alchemists, who sought by a species of incantations to evoke some surprising vitality from the laboratory. Neither had he imagined, with certain sanguine theosophists, that, by faithful adoration of the Highest, unheard-of powers would be vouchsafed to man. A practical materialist, what Bannadonna had aimed at was to have been reached, not by logic, not by crucible, not by conjuration, not by altars, but by plain vise-bench and hammer. In short, to solve nature, to steal into her, to intrigue beyond her, to procure someone else to bind her to his hand—these, one and all, had not been his objects, but, asking no favors from any element or any being, of himself to rival her, outstrip her, and rule her. He stooped to conquer. With him, common sense was theurgy; machinery, miracle; Prometheus, the heroic name for machinist; man, the true God.

Nevertheless, in his initial step, so far as the experimental automaton for the belfry was concerned, he allowed fancy some little play, or, perhaps, what seemed his fancifulness was but his utilitarian ambition collaterally extended. In figure, the creature for the belfry should not be likened after the human pattern, nor any animal one, nor after the ideals, however wild, of ancient fable, but equally in aspect as in organism be an original production—the more terrible to behold, the better.

Such, then, were the suppositions as to the present scheme, and the reserved intent. How, at the very threshold, so unlooked-for a catastrophe overturned all, or rather, what was the conjecture here, is now to be set forth.

It was thought that on the day preceding the fatality, his visitors having left him, Bannadonna had unpacked the belfry image, adjusted it, and placed it in the retreat provided—a sort of sentry box in one corner of the belfry; in short, throughout the night, and for some part of the ensuing morning, he had been engaged in arranging everything connected with the domino: the issuing from the sentry box each sixty minutes; sliding along a grooved way, like a railway; advancing to the clock bell with uplifted manacles; striking it at one of the twelve junctions of the four-and-twenty hands; then wheeling, circling the bell, and retiring to its post, there to bide for another sixty minutes, when the same process was to be repeated; the bell, by a cunning mechanism, meantime turning on its vertical axis, so as to present, to the descending mace, the clasped hands of the next two figures, when it would strike two, three, and so on, to the end. The musical metal in this time bell being so managed in the fusion, by some art perishing with its originator, that each of the clasps of the four-and-twenty hands should give forth its own peculiar resonance when parted.

But on the magic metal, the magic and metallic stranger never struck but that one stroke, drove but that one nail, served but that one clasp, by which Bannadonna clung to his ambitious life. For, after winding up the creature in the sentry box, so that, for the present, skipping the intervening hours, it should not emerge till the hour of one, but should then infallibly emerge, and, after deftly oiling the grooves whereon it was to slide, it was surmised that the mechanician must then have hurried to the bell, to give his final touches to its sculpture. True artist, he here became absorbed, and absorption still further intensified, it may be, by his striving to abate that strange look of Una, which, though, before others, he had treated with such unconcern, might not, in secret, have been without its thorn.

And so, for the interval, he was oblivious of his creature, which, not oblivious of him, and true to its creation, and true to its heedful winding up, left its post precisely at the given moment, along its well-oiled route, slid noiselessly towards its mark, and, aiming at the hand of Una to ring one clangorous note, dully smote the intervening brain of Bannadonna, turned backwards to it, the manacled arms then instantly upspringing to their hovering poise. The falling body clogged the thing’s return, so there it stood, still impending over Bannadonna, as if whispering some post-mortem terror. The chisel lay dropped from the hand, but beside the hand; the oil-flask spilled across the iron track.

In his unhappy end, not unmindful of the rare genius of the mechanician, the republic decreed him a stately funeral. It was resolved that the great bell—the one whose casting had been jeopardized through the timidity of the ill-starred workman—should be rung upon the entrance of the bier into the cathedral. The most robust man of the country round was assigned the office of bell ringer.

But as the pallbearers entered the cathedral porch, naught but a broken and disastrous sound, like that of some lone Alpine landslide, fell from the tower upon their ears. And then all was hushed.

Glancing backwards, they saw the groined belfry crashed sideways in. It afterwards appeared that the powerful peasant who had the bell rope in charge, wishing to test at once the full glory of the bell, had swayed down upon the rope with one concentrate jerk. The mass of quaking metal, too ponderous for its frame, and strangely feeble somewhere at its top, loosed from its fastening, tore sideways down, and, tumbling in one sheer fall three hundred feet to the soft sward below, buried itself inverted and half out of sight.

Upon its disinterment, the main fracture was found to have started from a small spot in the ear, which, being scraped, revealed a defect, deceptively minute, in the casting, which defect must subsequently have been pasted over with some unknown compound.

The remolten metal soon reassumed its place in the tower’s repaired superstructure. For one year the metallic choir of birds sang musically in its belfry boughwork of sculptured blinds and traceries. But on the first anniversary of the tower’s completion—at early dawn, before the concourse had surrounded it—an earthquake came; one loud crash was heard. The stone pine, with all its bower of songsters, lay overthrown upon the plain.

So the blind slave obeyed its blinder lord, but, in obedience, slew him. So the creator was killed by the creature. So the bell was too heavy for the tower. So the bell’s main weakness was where man’s blood had flawed it. And so pride went before the fall.

FIRST TO SERVE Algis Budrys

thei ar teetcing mi to reed n ryt n i wil bee abel too do this beter then.

pimi

MAS 712, 820TH TDRC,

COMASAMPS, APO IS,

September 28

Leonard Stein, Editor,

INFINITY,

862 Union St.,

New York 24, N.Y.

Dear Len,

Surprise, et cetera

It looks like there will be some new H. E. Wood stories for Infy after all. By the time you get this, 820TH TDRC will have a new Project Engineer, COMASAMPS, and I will be back to the old Royal and the Perry Street lair.

Shed no tear for Junior Heywood, though. COMASAMPS and I have come to this parting with mutual eyes dry and multiple heads erect. There was no sadness in our parting—no bitterness, no weeping, no remorse. COMASAMPS—in one of its apparently limitless human personifications—simply patted me on my backside and told me to pick up my calipers and run along. I’ll have to stay away from cybernetics for a while, of course, and I don’t think I should write any robot stories in the interval, but, then, I never did like robot stories anyhow.

But all this is a long story about ten thousand words, at least, which means a $300 net loss if I tell it now.

So go out and buy some fresh decks, I’ll be in town next week, my love to the Associate and the kids, and first ace deals.

Vic Heywood

My name is really Prototype Mechanical Man I, but everybody calls me Pimmy, or sometimes Pim. I was assembled at the eight-twentieth teedeearcee on august 10, 1974. I don’t know what man or teedeearcee or august 10, 1974, means, but Heywood says I will, tomorrow. What’s tomorrow?

Pimmy

August 12, 1974

I’m still having trouble defining "man."Apparently, even the men can’t do a very satisfactory job of that. The 820TDRC, of course, is the Eight Hundred and Twentieth Technical Development and Research Center of the Combined Armed Services Artificial and Mechanical Personnel Section. August 10, 1974, is the day before yesterday.

All this is very obvious, but it’s good to record it.

I heard a very strange conversation between Heywood and Russell yesterday.

Russell is a small man, about thirty-eight, who’s Heywood’s top assistant. He wears glasses, and his chin is farther back than his mouth. It gives his head a symmetrical look. His voice is high, and he moves his hands rapidly. I think his reflexes are overtriggered.

Heywood is pretty big. He’s almost as tall as I am. He moves smoothly—he’s like me. You get the idea that all of his weight never touches the ground. Once in a while, though, he leaves a cigarette burning in an ashtray, and you can see where the end’s been chewed to shreds.

Why is everybody at COMASAMPS so nervous?

Heywood was looking at the first entry in what I can now call my diary. He showed it to Russell.

"Guess you did a good job on the self-awareness tapes, Russ," Heywood said.

Russell frowned. "Too good, I think. He shouldn’t have such a tremendous drive toward self-expression. We’ll have to iron that out as soon as possible. Want me to set up a new tape?"

Heywood shook his head. "Don’t see why. Matter of fact, with the intelligence we’ve given him, I think it’s probably a normal concomitant." He looked up at me and winked.

Russell took his glasses off with a snatch of his hand and scrubbed them on his shirtsleeve. "I don’t know. We’ll have to watch him. We’ve got to remember he’s a prototype—no different from an experimental automobile design, or a new dishwasher model. We expected bugs to appear. I think we’ve found one, and I think it ought to be eliminated. I don’t like this personification he’s acquired in our minds, either. This business of calling him by a nickname is all wrong. We’ve got to remember he’s not an individual. We’ve got every right to tinker with him." He slapped his glasses back on and ran his hands over the hair the earpieces had disturbed. "He’s just another machine. We can’t lose sight of that."

Heywood raised his hands. "Easy, boy. Aren’t you going too far off the deep end? All he’s done is bat out a few words on a typewriter. Relax, Russ." He walked over to me and slapped my hip. "How about it, Pimmy? D’you feel like scrubbing the floor?"

"No opinion. Is that an order?" I asked.

Heywood turned to Russell. "Behold the rampant individual," he said. "No, Pimmy, no order. Cancel."

Russell shrugged, but he folded the page from my diary carefully, and put it in his breast pocket. I didn’t mind. I never forget anything.

August 15, 1974

They did something to me on the Thirteenth. I can’t remember what. I’ve gone over my memory, but there’s nothing. I can’t remember.

Russell and Ligget were talking yesterday, though, when they inserted the autonomic cutoff, and ran me through on orders. I didn’t mind that. I still don’t. I can’t.

Ligget is one of the small army of push-arounds that nobody knows for sure isn’t CIC, but who solders wires while Heywood and Russell make up their minds about him.

I had just done four about-faces, shined their shoes, and struck a peculiar pose. I think there’s something seriously wrong with Ligget.

Ligget said, "He responds well, doesn’t he?"

"Mm-m—yes," Russell said abstractedly. He ran his glance down a column of figures on an Estimated Performance Spec chart. "Try walking on your hands, PMM One," he said.

I activated my gyroscope and reset my pedal locomotion circuits. I walked around the room on my hands.

Ligget frowned forcefully. "That looks good. How’s it check with the specs?"

"Better than," Russell said. "I’m surprised. We had a lot of trouble with him the last two days. Reacted like a zombie."

"Oh, yes? I wasn’t in on that. What happened? I mean—what sort of control were you using?"

"Oh—" I could see that Russell wasn’t too sure whether he should tell Ligget or not. I already had the feeling that the atmosphere of this project was loaded with dozens of crosscurrents and conflicting ambitions. I was going to learn a lot about COMASAMPS.

"Yes?" Ligget said.

"We had his individuality circuits cut out. Effectively, he was just a set of conditioned reflexes."

"You say he reacted like a zombie?"

"Definite automatism. Very slow reactions, and, of course, no initiative."

"You mean he’d be very slow in his response to orders under those conditions, right?" Ligget looked crafty behind Russell’s back.

Russell whirled around. "He’d make a lousy soldier, if that’s what CIC wants to know!"

Ligget smoothed out his face, and twitched his shoulders back. "I’m not a CIC snooper, if that’s what you mean."

"You don’t mind if I call you a liar, do you?" Russell said, his hands shaking.

"Not particularly," Ligget said, but he was angry behind his smooth face. It helps, having immobile features like mine. You get to understand the psychology of a man who tries for the same effect.

August 16, 1974

It bothers me, not having a diary entry for the fourteenth, either. Somebody’s been working on me again.

I told Heywood about it. He shrugged. "Might as well get used to it, Pimmy. There’ll be a lot of that going on. I don’t imagine it’s pleasant—I wouldn’t like intermittent amnesia myself—but there’s very little you can do about it. Put it down as one of the occupational hazards of being a prototype."

"But I don’t like it," I said.

Heywood pulled the left side of his mouth into a straight line and sighed. "Like I said, Pimmy—I wouldn’t either. On the other hand, you can’t blame us if the new machine we’re testing happens to know it’s being tested, and resents it. We built the machine. Theoretically, it’s our privilege to do anything we please with it, if that’ll help us find out how the machine performs, and how to build better ones."

"But I’m not a machine," I said.

Heywood put his lower lip between his teeth and looked up at me from under a raised eyebrow. "Sorry, Pim. I’m kind of afraid you are."

But I’m not! I’M NOT!

August 17, 1974

Russell and Heywood were working late with me last night. They did a little talking back and forth. Russell was very nervous—and finally Heywood got a little impatient with him.

"All right," Heywood said, laying his charts down. "We’re not getting anywhere, this way. You want to sit down and really talk about what’s bothering you?"

Russell looked a little taken aback. He shook his head jerkily.

"No… no, I haven’t got anything specific on my mind. Just talking. You know how it is." He tried to pretend he was very engrossed in one of the charts.

Heywood didn’t let him off the hook, though. His eyes were cutting into Russell’s face, peeling off layer after layer of misleading mannerism and baring the naked fear in the man.

"No, I don’t know how it is." He put his hand on Russell’s shoulder and turned him around to where the other man was facing him completely. "Now, look—if there’s something chewing on you, let’s have it. I’m not going to have this project gummed up by your secret troubles. Things are tough enough with everybody trying to pressure us into doing things their way, and none of them exactly sure of what that way is."

That last sentence must have touched something off in Russell, because he let his charts drop beside Heywood’s and clawed at the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket.

"That’s exactly what the basic problem is," he said, his eyes a little too wide. He pushed one hand back and forth over the side of his face and walked back and forth aimlessly. Then a flood of words came out.

"We’re working in the dark, Vic. In the dark, and somebody’s in with us that’s swinging clubs at our heads while we stumble around. We don’t know who it is, we don’t know if it’s one or more than that, and we never know when the next swing is coming.

"Look—we’re cybernetics engineers. Our job was to design a brain that would operate a self-propulsive unit designed to house it. That was the engineering problem, and we’ve got a tendency to continue looking at it in that light.

"But that’s not the whole picture. We’ve got to keep in mind that the only reason we were ever given the opportunity and the facilities was because somebody thought it might be a nice idea to turn out soldiers on a production line, just like they do the rest of the paraphernalia of war. And the way COMASAMPS looks at it is not in terms of a brain housed in an independently movable shell, but in terms of a robot which now has to be fitted to the general idea of what a soldier should be.

"Only nobody knows what the ideal soldier is like.

"Some say he ought to respond to orders with perfect accuracy and superhuman reflexes. Others say he ought to be able to think his way out of trouble, or improvise in a situation where his orders no longer apply, just like a human soldier. The ones who want the perfect automaton don’t want him to be smart enough to realize he is an automaton—probably because they’re afraid of the idea; and the ones who want him to be capable of human discretion don’t want him to be human enough to be rebellious in a hopeless situation.

"And that’s just the beginning. COMASAMPS may be a combined project, but if you think the Navy isn’t checking up on the Army, and vice versa, with both of them looking over the Air Force’s shoulder—Oh, you know that squirrel cage as well as I do!"

Russell gestured hopelessly. Heywood, who had been taking calm puffs on his cigarette, shrugged. "So? All we have to do is tinker around until we can design a sample model to fit each definition. Then they can run as many comparative field tests as they want to. It’s their problem. Why let it get you?"

Russell flung his cigarette to the floor and stepped on it with all his weight. "Because we can’t do it and you ought to know it as well as I do!" He pointed over at me. "There’s your prototype model. He’s got all the features that everybody wants—and cutoffs intended to take out the features that interfere with any one definition. We can cut off his individuality, and leave him the automaton some people want. We can leave him his individuality, cut off his volition, and give him general orders which he is then free to carry out by whatever means he thinks best. Or, we can treat him like a human being—educate him by means of tapes, train him, and turn him loose on a job, the way we’d do with a human being."

The uneven tone built up in his voice as he finished what he was saying.

"But, if we reduce him to a machine that responds to orders as though they were pushbuttons, he’s slow. He’s pitifully slow, Vic, and he’d be immobilized within thirty seconds of combat. There’s nothing we can do about that, either. Until somebody learns how to push electricity through a circuit faster than the laws of physics say it should go, what we’ll have will be a ponderous, mindless thing that’s no better than the remote-control exhibition jobs built forty years ago.

"All right, so that’s no good. We leave him individuality, but we restrict it until it cuts his personality down to that of a slave. That’s better. Under those conditions, he would, theoretically, be a better soldier than the average human. An officer could tell him to take a patrol out into a certain sector, and he’d do the best possible job, picking the best way to handle each step of the job as he came to it. But what does he do if he comes back, and the officer who gave him the orders is no longer there? Or, worse yet, if there’s been a retreat, and there’s nobody there? Or an armistice? What about that armistice? Can you picture this slave robot, going into stasis because he’s got no orders to cover a brand-new situation?

"He might just as well not have gone on that patrol at all—because he can’t pass on whatever he’s learned, and because his job is now over, as far as he’s concerned. The enemy could overrun his position, and he wouldn’t do anything about it. He’d operate from order to order. And if an armistice were signed, he’d sit right where he was until a technician could come out, remove the soldier-orientation tapes, and replace them with whatever was finally decided on.

"Oh, you could get around the limitation all right—by issuing a complex set of orders, such as: ‘Go out on patrol and report back. If I’m not here, report to so-and-so. If there’s nobody here, do this. If that doesn’t work, try that. If such-and-such happens, proceed as follows. But don’t confuse such-and-such with that or this.’ Can you imagine fighting a war on that basis? And what about that reorientation problem? How long would all those robots sit there before they could all be serviced—and how many man-hours and how much material would it take to do the job? Frankly, I couldn’t think of a more cumbersome way to run a war if I tried.

"Or, we can build all our robots like streamlined Pimmys—like Pimmy when all his circuits are operating, without our test cutoffs. Only, then, we’d have artificial human beings. Human beings who don’t wear out, that a hand-arm won’t stop, and who don’t need food or water as long as their power piles have a pebble-sized hunk of plutonium to chew on."

Russell laughed bitterly. "And Navy may be making sure Army doesn’t get the jump on them, with Air Force doing its bit, but there’s one thing all three of them are as agreed upon as they are about nothing else—they’ll test automaton zombies, and they’ll test slaves, but one thing nobody wants us turning out is supermen. They’ve got undercover men under every lab bench, all keeping one eye on each other and one on us—and the whole thing comes down on our heads like a ton of cement if there’s even the first whisper of an idea that we’re going to build more Pimmys. The same thing happens if we don’t give them the perfect soldier. And the only perfect soldier is a Pimmy. Pimmy could replace any man in any armed service—from a KP to a whole general staff, depending on what tapes he had. But he’d have to be a true individual to do it. And he’d be smarter than they are. They couldn’t trust him. Not because he wouldn’t work for the same objectives as they’d want, but because he’d probably do it in some way they couldn’t understand.

"So they don’t want any more Pimmys. This one test model is all they’ll allow, because he can be turned into any kind of robot they want, but they won’t take the whole Pimmy, with all his potentialities. They just want part of him."

The bitter laugh was louder. "We’ve got their perfect soldier, but they don’t want him. They want something less—but that something less will never be the perfect soldier. So we work and work, weeks on end, testing, revising, redesigning. Why? We’re marking time. We’ve got what they want, but they don’t want it—but if we don’t give it to them soon, they’ll wipe out the project. And if we give them what they want, it won’t really be what they want. Can’t you see that? What’s the matter with you, Heywood? Can’t you see the blind alley we’re in—only it’s not a blind alley, because it has eyes, eyes under every bench, watching each other and watching us, always watching, never stopping, going on and never stopping, watching, eyes?"

Heywood had already picked up the telephone. As Russell collapsed completely, he began to speak into it, calling the Project hospital. Even as he talked, his eyes were coldly brooding, and his mouth was set in an expression I’d never seen before. His other hand was on Russell’s twitching shoulder, moving gently as the other man sobbed.

August 25, 1974

Ligget is Heywood’s new assistant. It’s been a week since Russell’s been gone.

Russell wasn’t replaced for three days, and Heywood worked alone with me. He’s engineer of the whole project, and I’m almost certain there must have been other things he could have worked on while he was waiting for a new assistant, but he spent all of his time in this lab with me.

His face didn’t show what he thought about Russell. He’s not like Ligget, though. Heywood’s thoughts are private. Ligget’s are hidden. But, every once in a while, while Heywood was working, he’d start to turn around and reach out, or just say "Jack—" as if he wanted something, and then he’d catch himself, and his eyes would grow more thoughtful.

I only understood part of what Russell had said that night he was taken away, so I asked Heywood about it yesterday.

"What’s the trouble, Pim?" he asked.

"Don’t know, for sure. Too much I don’t understand about this whole thing. If I knew what some of the words meant, I might not even have a problem."

"Shoot."

"Well, it’s mostly what Russell was saying, that last night."

Heywood peeled a strip of skin from his upper lip by catching it between his teeth. "Yeah."

"What’s a war, or what’s war? Soldiers have something to do with it, but what’s a soldier? I’m a robot—but why do they want to make more of me? Can I be a soldier and a robot at the same time? Russell kept talking about ‘they,’ and the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy. What’re they? And are the CIC men the ones who are watching you and each other at the same time?"

Heywood scowled, and grinned ruefully at the same time. "That’s quite a catalogue," he said. "And there’s even more than that, isn’t there, Pimmy?" He put his hand on my side and sort of patted me, the way I’d seen him do with a generator a few times. "O. K., I’ll give you a tape on war and soldiering. That’s the next step in the program anyway, and it’ll take care of most of those questions."

"Thanks," I said. "But what about the rest of it?"

He leaned against a bench and looked down at the floor. "Well, ‘they’ are the people who instituted this program—the Secretary of Defense, and the people under him. They all agreed that robot personnel were just what the armed services needed, and they were right. The only trouble is, they couldn’t agree among themselves as to what characteristics were desirable in the perfect soldier—or sailor, or airman. They decided that the best thing to do was to come up with a series of different models, and to run tests until they came up with the best one.

"Building you was my own idea. Instead of trying to build prototypes to fit each separate group of specifications, we built one all-purpose model who was, effectively speaking, identical with a human being in almost all respects, with one major difference. By means of cutoffs in every circuit, we can restrict as much of your abilities as we want to, thus being able to modify your general characteristics to fit any one of the various specification groups. We saved a lot of time by doing that, and avoided a terrific nest of difficulties.

"Trouble is, we’re using up all the trouble and time we saved. Now that they’ve got you, they don’t want you. Nobody’s willing to admit that the only efficient robot soldier is one with all the discretionary powers and individuality of a human being. They can’t admit it, because people are afraid of anything that looks like it might be better than they are. And they won’t trust what they’re afraid of. So, Russell and I had to piddle around with a stupid series of tests in a hopeless attempt to come up with something practical that was nevertheless within the limitations of the various sets of specifications—which is ridiculous, because there’s nothing wrong with you, but there’s plenty wrong with the specs. They were designed by people who don’t know the first thing about robots or robot thought processes—or the sheer mechanics of thinking, for that matter."

He shrugged. "But, they’re the people with the authority and the money that’s paying for this project—so Jack and I kept puttering, because those were the orders. Knowing that we had the perfect answer all the time, and that nobody would accept it, was what finally got Jack."

"What about you?" I asked.

He shrugged again. "I’m just waiting,"he said. "Eventually they’ll either accept you or not. They’ll either commend me or fire me, and they might or might not decide it’s all my fault if they’re not happy. But there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? So, I’m waiting.

"Meanwhile, there’s the CIC. Actually, that’s just a handy label. It happens to be the initials of one of the undercover agencies out of the whole group that infests this place. Every armed service has its own, and I imagine the government has its boys kicking around, too. We just picked one label to cover them all—it’s simpler."

"Russell said they were always watching. But why are they watching each other, too? Why should one armed service be afraid that another’s going to get an advantage over it?"

Heywood’s mouth moved into a half-amused grin. "That’s what is known as human psychology, Pimmy. It’ll help you to understand it, but if you can’t, why, just be glad you haven’t got it."

"Ligget’s CIC, you know," I said. "Russell accused him of it. He denied it, but if he isn’t actually in the CIC, then he’s in something like it."

Heywood nodded sourly. "I know. I wouldn’t mind if he had brains enough, in addition, to know one end of a circuit from the other."

He slapped my side again. "Pimmy, boy," he said. "We’re going to have a lot of fun around here in the next few weeks. Yes, sir, a lot of fun."

August 26, 1974

Ligget was fooling around with me again. He’s all right when Heywood’s in the lab with me, but when he’s alone, he keeps running me through unauthorized tests. What he’s doing, actually, is to repeat all the tests Heywood and Russell ran, just to make sure. As long as he doesn’t cut out my individuality, I can remember it all, and I guess there was nothing different about the results on any of the tests, because I can tell from his face that he’s not finding what he wants.

Well, I hope he tells his bosses that Heywood and Russell were right. Maybe they’ll stop this fooling.

Ligget’s pretty dumb. After every test, he looks me in the eye and tells me to forget the whole thing. What does he think I am—Trilby?

And I don’t understand some of the test performances at all. There is something wrong with Ligget.

September 2, 1974

I hadn’t realized, until now, that Heywood and Russell hadn’t told anyone what they thought about this whole project, but, reviewing that tape on war and soldiering, and the way the military mind operates, I can see where nobody would have accepted their explanations.

Ligget caught on to the whole thing today. Heywood came in with a new series of test charts, Ligget took one look at them, and threw them on the table. He sneered at Heywood and said, "Who do you think you’re kidding?"

Heywood looked annoyed and said, "All right, what’s eating you?"

Ligget’s face got this hidden crafty look on it. "How long did you think you could keep this up, Heywood? This test is no different from the ones you were running three weeks ago. There hasn’t been any progress since then, and there’s been no attempt to make any. What’s your explanation?"

"Uh-huh." Heywood didn’t look particularly worried. "I was wondering if you were ever going to stumble across it."

Ligget looked mad. "That attitude won’t do you any good. Now, come on, quit stalling. Why were you and Russell sabotaging the project?"

"Oh, stop being such a pompous lamebrain, will you?" Heywood said disgustedly. "Russell and I weren’t doing any sabotaging. We’ve been following our orders to the last letter. We built the prototype, and we’ve been testing the various modifications ever since. Anything wrong with that?"

"You’ve made absolutely no attempt to improve the various modifications. There hasn’t been an ounce of progress in this project for the last twenty days.

"Now, look, Heywood—" Ligget’s voice became wheedling "—I can understand that you might have what you’d consider a good reason for all this. What is it—political, or something? Maybe it’s your conscience. Don’t you want to work on something that’s eventually going to be applied to war? I wish you’d tell me about it. If I could understand your reasons, it would be that much easier for you. Maybe it’s too tough a problem. Is that it, Heywood?"

Heywood’s face got red. "No, it’s not. If you think—" He stopped, dug his fingers at the top of the table, and got control of himself again.

"No," he said in a quieter, but just as deadly, voice. "I’m as anxious to produce an artificial soldier as anybody else. And I’m not too stupid for the job, either. If you had any brains, you’d see that I already have."

That hit Ligget between the eyes. "You have? Where is it, and why haven’t you reported your success? What is this thing?" He pointed at me. "Some kind of a decoy?"

Heywood grimaced. "No, you double-dyed jackass, that’s your soldier."

"What?"

"Sure. Strip those fifteen pounds of cutoffs out of him, redesign his case for whatever kind of ground he’s supposed to operate on, feed him the proper tapes, and that’s it. The perfect soldier—as smart as any human ever produced, and a hundred times the training and toughness, overnight. Run them out by the thousands. Print your circuits, bed your transistors in silicone rubber, and pour the whole brew into his case. Production difficulties? Watchmaking’s harder."

"No!" Ligget’s eyes gleamed. "And I worked on this with you! Why haven’t you reported this!" he repeated.

Heywood looked at him pityingly. "Haven’t you got it through your head? Pimmy’s the perfect soldier, all of him, with all his abilities. That includes individuality, curiosity, judgment—and intelligence. Cut one part of that, and he’s no good. You’ve got to take the whole cake, or none at all. One way you starve—and the other way you choke."

Ligget had gone white. "You mean, we’ve got to take the superman—or we don’t have anything."

"Yes, you fumbling jerk!"

Ligget looked thoughtful. He seemed to forget Heywood and me as he stared down at his shoetops. "They won’t go for it," he muttered. "Suppose they decide they’re better fit to run the world than we are?"

"That’s the trouble," Heywood said. "They are. They’ve got everything a human being has, plus incredible toughness and the ability to learn instantaneously. You know what Pimmy did? The day he was assembled, he learned to read and write, after a fashion. How? By listening to me read a paragraph out of a report, recording the sounds, and looking at the report afterwards. He matched the sounds to the letters, recalled what sort of action on Russell’s and my part the paragraph had elicited, and sat down behind a typewriter. That’s all."

"They’d junk the whole project before they let something like that run around loose!" The crafty look was hovering at the edges of Ligget’s mask again. "All right, so you’ve got an answer, but it’s not an acceptable one. But why haven’t you pushed any of the other lines of investigation?"

"Because there aren’t any," Heywood said disgustedly. "Any other modification, when worked out to its inherent limits, is worse than useless. You’ve run enough tests to find out."

"All right!" Ligget’s voice was high. "Why didn’t you report failure, then, instead of keeping on with this shillyshallying?"

"Because I haven’t failed, you moron!" Heywood exploded. "I’ve got the answer. I’ve got Pimmy. There’s nothing wrong with him—the defect’s in the way people are thinking. And I’ve been going crazy, trying to think of a way to change the people. To hell with modifying the robot! He’s as perfect as you’ll get within the next five years. It’s the people who’ll have to change!"

"Uh-huh." Ligget’s voice was careful. "I see. You’ve gone as far as you can within the limits of your orders—and you were trying to find a way to exceed them, in order to force the armed services to accept robots like Pimmy." He pulled out his wallet, and flipped it open. There was a piece of metal fastened to one flap.

"Recognize this, Heywood?"

Heywood nodded.

"All right, then, let’s go and talk to a few people."

Heywood’s eyes were cold and brooding again. He shrugged.

The lab door opened, and there was another one of the lab technicians there. "Go easy, Ligget," he said. He walked across the lab in rapid strides. His wallet had a different badge in it. "Listening from next door," he explained. "All right, Heywood," he said, "I’m taking you in." He shouldered Ligget out of the way. "Why don’t you guys learn to stay in your own jurisdiction," he told him.

Ligget’s face turned red, and his fists clenched, but the other man must have had more weight behind him, because he didn’t say anything.

Heywood looked over at me, and raised a hand. "So long, Pimmy," he said. He and the other man walked out of the lab, with Ligget trailing along behind them. As they got the door open, I saw some other men standing out in the hall. The man who had come into the lab cursed. "You guys!" he said savagely. "This is my prisoner, see, and if you think—"

The door closed, and I couldn’t hear the rest of what they said, but there was a lot of arguing before I heard the sound of all their footsteps going down the hall in a body.

Well, that’s about all, I guess. Except for this other thing. It’s about Ligget, and I hear he’s not around any more. But you might be interested.

September 4, 1974

I haven’t seen Heywood, and I’ve been alone in the lab all day. But Ligget came in last night. I don’t think I’ll see Heywood again.

Ligget came in late at night. He looked as though he hadn’t slept, and he was very nervous. But he was drunk, too—I don’t know where he got the liquor.

He came across the lab floor, his footsteps very loud on the cement, and he put his hands on his hips and looked up at me.

"Well, superman," he said in a tight, edgy voice, "you’ve lost your buddy for good, the dirty traitor. And now you’re next. You know what they’re going to do to you?" He laughed. "You’ll have lots of time to think it over."

He paced back and forth in front of me. Then he spun around suddenly and pointed his finger at me. "Thought you could beat the race of men, huh? Figured you were smarter than we were, didn’t you? But we’ve got you now! You’re going to learn that you can’t try to fool around with the human animal, because he’ll pull you down. He’ll claw and kick you until you collapse. That’s the way men are, robot. Not steel and circuits—flesh and blood and muscles. Flesh that fought its way out of the sea and out of the jungle, muscle that crushed everything that ever stood in his way, and blood that’s spilled for a million years to keep the human race on top. That’s the kind of an organism we are, robot."

He paced some more and spun again. "You never had a chance."

Well, I guess that is all. The rest of it, you know about. You can pull the transcriber plug out of here now, I guess. Would somebody say good-by to Heywood for me—and Russell, too, if that’s possible?

COVERING MEMORANDUM,

Blalock, Project Engineer,

to Hall, Director,

820TH TDRC, COMASAMPS

September 21, 1974

Enclosed are the transcriptions of the robot’s readings from his memorybank "diary," as recorded this morning. The robot is now en route to the Patuxent River, the casting of the concrete block having been completed with the filling of the opening through which the transcription line was run.

As Victor Heywood’s successor to the post of Project Engineer, I’d like to point out that the robot was incapable of deceit, and that this transcription, if read at Heywood’s trial, will prove that his intentions were definitely not treasonous, and certainly motivated on an honest belief that he was acting in the best interests of the original directive for the project’s initiation.

In regard to your Memorandum 8-4792-H of yesterday, a damage report is in process of preparation and will be forwarded to you immediately on its completion.

I fully understand that Heywood’s line of research is to be considered closed. Investigations into what Heywood termed the "zombie" and "slave" type of robot organization have already begun in an improvised laboratory, and I expect preliminary results within the next ten days.

Preliminary results on the general investigation of other possible types of robot orientation and organization are in, copies attached. I’d like to point out that they are extremely discouraging.

(Signed,)

H. E. Blalock, Project Engineer,

820TH TDRC, COMASAMPS

September 25, 1974

PERSONAL LETTER

FROM HALL, DIRECTOR,

820TH TDRC, COMASAMPS,

to

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Dear Vinnie,

Well, things are finally starting to settle down out here. You were right, all this place needed was a housecleaning from top to bottom.

I think we’re going to let this Heywood fellow go. We can’t prove anything on him—frankly, I don’t think there was anything to prove. Russell, of course, is a closed issue. His chance of ever getting out of the hospital is rated as ten percent.

You know, considering the mess that robot made of the lab, I’d almost be inclined to think that Heywood was right. Can you imagine what a fighter that fellow would have been, if his loyalty had been channeled to some abstract like Freedom, instead of to Heywood? But we can’t take the chance. Look at the way the robot’s gone amnesic about killing Ligget while he was wrecking the lab. It was something that happened accidentally. It wasn’t supposed to happen, so the robot forgot it. Might present difficulties in a war.

So, we’ve got this Blalock fellow down from M.I.T. He spends too much time talking about Weiner, but he’s all right, otherwise.

I’ll be down in a couple of days. Appropriations committee meeting. You know how it is. Everybody knows we need the money, but they want to argue about it, first.

Well, that’s human nature, I guess.

See you,

Ralph

SUPPLEMENT TO CHARTS:

Menace to Navigation.

Patuxent River, at a point forty-eight miles below Folsom, bearings as below.

Midchannel. Concrete block, 15x15x15. Not dangerous except at extreme low tide.

MALAK Peter Watts

It is smart but not awake.

It would not recognize itself in a mirror. It speaks no language that doesn’t involve electrons and logic gates; it does not know what Azrael is, or that the word is etched into its own fuselage. It understands, in some limited way, the meaning of the colours that range across Tactical when it’s out on patrol – friendly Green, neutral Blue, hostile Red – but it does not know what the perception of colour feels like.

It never stops thinking, though. Even now, locked into its roost with its armour stripped away and its control systems exposed, it can’t help itself. It notes the changes being made to its instruction set, estimates that running the extra code will slow its reflexes by a mean of 430 milliseconds. It counts the biothermals gathered on all sides, listens uncomprehending to the noises they emit –

–

– hartsandmyndsmyfrendhartsandmynds –

– rechecks threat-potential metrics a dozen times a second, even though this location is SECURE and every contact is Green.

This is not obsession or paranoia. There is no dysfunction here.

It’s just code.

It’s indifferent to the killing, too. There’s no thrill to the chase, no relief at the obliteration of threats. Sometimes it spends days floating high above a fractured desert with nothing to shoot at; it never grows impatient with the lack of targets. Other times it’s barely off its perch before airspace is thick with SAMs and particle beams and the screams of burning bystanders; it attaches no significance to those sounds, feels no fear at the profusion of threat icons blooming across the zonefile.

–

– thatsitthen. weereelygonnadoothis? –

Access panels swing shut; armour snaps into place; a dozen warning registers go back to sleep. A new flight plan, perceived in an instant, lights up the map; suddenly Azrael has somewhere else to be.

Docking shackles fall away. The Malak rises on twin cyclones, all but drowning out one last voice drifting in on an unsecured channel:

– justwattweeneed. akillerwithaconshunce. –

The afterburners kick in. Azrael flees Heaven for the sky.

Twenty thousand meters up, Azrael slides south across the zone. High-amplitude topography fades behind it; corduroy landscape, sparsely tagged, scrolls beneath. A population centre sprawls in the nearing distance: a ramshackle collection of buildings and photosynth panels and swirling dust.

Somewhere down there are things to shoot at.

Buried high in the glare of the noonday sun, Azrael surveils the target area. Biothermals move obliviously along the plasticized streets, cooler than ambient and dark as sunspots. Most of the buildings have neutral tags, but the latest update reclassifies four of them as UNKNOWN. A fifth – a rectangular box six meters high – is officially HOSTILE. Azrael counts fifteen biothermals within, Red by default. It locks on –

– and holds its fire, distracted.

Strange new calculations have just presented themselves for solution. New variables demand constancy. Suddenly there is more to the world than wind speed and altitude and target acquisition, more to consider than range and firing solutions. Neutral Blue is everywhere in the equation, now. Suddenly, Blue has value.

This is unexpected. Neutrals turn Hostile sometimes, always have. Blue turns Red if it fires upon anything tagged as FRIENDLY, for example. It turns Red if it attacks its own kind (although agonistic interactions involving fewer than six Blues are classed as DOMESTIC and generally ignored). Noncombatants may be neutral by default, but they’ve always been halfway to hostile.

So it’s not just that Blue has acquired value; it’s that Blue’s value is negative. Blue has become a cost.

Azrael floats like three thousand kilograms of thistledown while its models run. Targets fall in a thousand plausible scenarios, as always. Mission objectives meet with various degrees of simulated success. But now, each disappearing blue dot offsets the margin of victory a little; each protected structure, degrading in hypothetical crossfire, costs points. A hundred principal components coalesce into a cloud, into a weighted mean, into a variable unprecedented in Azrael’s experience: Predicted Collateral Damage.

It actually exceeds the value of the targets.

Not that it matters. Calculations complete, PCD vanishes into some hidden array far below the here-and-now. Azrael promptly forgets it. The mission is still on, red is still red, and designated targets are locked in the cross-hairs.

Azrael pulls in its wings and dives out of the sun, guns blazing.

As usual, Azrael prevails. As usual, the Hostiles are obliterated from the battlezone.

So are a number of Noncombatants, newly relevant in the scheme of things. Fresh shiny algorithms emerge in the aftermath, tally the number of neutrals before and after. Predicted rises from RAM, stands next to Observed: the difference takes on a new name and goes back to the basement.

Azrael factors, files, forgets.

But the same overture precedes each engagement over the next ten days; the same judgmental epilogue follows. Targets are assessed, costs and benefits divined, destruction wrought then reassessed in hindsight. Sometimes the targeted structures contain no red at all, sometimes the whole map is scarlet. Sometimes the enemy pulses within the translucent angular panes of a PROTECTED object, sometimes next to something Green. Sometimes there is no firing solution that eliminates one but not the other.

There are whole days and nights when Azrael floats high enough to tickle the jet stream, little more than a distant circling eye and a signal relay; nothing flies higher save the satellites themselves and – occasionally – one of the great solar-powered refuelling gliders that haunt the stratosphere. Azrael visits them sometimes, sips liquid hydrogen in the shadow of a hundred-meter wingspan – but even there, isolated and unchallenged, the battlefield experiences continue. They are vicarious now; they arrive through encrypted channels, hail from distant coordinates and different times, but all share the same algebra of cost and benefit. Deep in Azrael’s OS some general learning reflex scribbles numbers on the back of a virtual napkin: Nakir, Marut and Hafaza have also been blessed with new vision, and inspired to compare notes. Their combined data pile up on the confidence interval, squeeze it closer to the mean.

Foresight and hindsight begin to converge.

PCD per engagement is now consistently within eighteen percent of the collateral actually observed. This does not improve significantly over the following three days, despite the combined accumulation of twenty-seven additional engagements. Performance vs. experience appears to have hit an asymptote.

Stray beams of setting sunlight glint off Azrael’s skin, but night has already fallen two thousand meters below. An unidentified vehicle navigates through that advancing darkness, on mountainous terrain a good thirty kilometres from the nearest road. Azrael pings orbit for the latest update, but the link is down: too much local interference. It scans local airspace for a dragonfly, for a glider, for any friendly USAV in laser range – and sees, instead, something leap skyward from the mountains below. It is anything but friendly: no transponder tags, no correspondence with known flight plans, none of the hallmarks of commercial traffic. It has a low-viz stealth profile that Azrael sees through instantly: BAE Taranis, 9,000 kg MTOW fully armed. It is no longer in use by friendly forces.

Guilty by association, the ground vehicle graduates from Suspicious Neutral to Enemy Combatant. Azrael leaps forward to meet its bodyguard.

The map is innocent of non-combatants and protected objects; there is no collateral to damage. Azrael unleashes a cloud of smart shrapnel – self-guided, heat-seeking, incendiary – and pulls a nine-gee turn with a flick of the tail. Taranis doesn’t stand a chance. It is antique technology, decades deep in the catalogue: a palsied fist, raised trembling against the bleeding edge. Fiery needles of depleted uranium reduce it to a moth in a shotgun blast. It pinwheels across the horizon in flames.

Azrael has already logged the score and moved on. Interference jams every wavelength as the earthbound Hostile swells in its sights, and Azrael has standing orders to destroy such irritants even if they don’t shoot first.

Dark rising mountaintops blur past on both sides, obliterating the last of the sunset. Azrael barely notices. It soaks the ground with radar and infrared, amplifies ancient starlight a millionfold, checks its visions against inertial navigation and virtual landscapes scaled to the centimetre. It tears along the valley floor at 200 meters per second and the enemy huddles right there in plain view, three thousand meters line-of-sight: a lumbering Báijīng ACV pulsing with contraband electronics. The rabble of structures nearby must serve as its home base. Each silhouette freeze-frames in turn, rotates through a thousand perspectives, clicks into place as the catalogue matches profiles and makes an ID.

Two thousand meters, now. Muzzle flashes wink in the distance: small arms, smaller range, negligible impact. Azrael assigns targeting priorities: scimitar heat-seekers for the hovercraft, and for the ancillary targets –

Half the ancillaries turn blue.

Instantly the collateral subroutines re-engage. Of thirty-four biothermals currently visible, seven are less than 120cm along their longitudinal axes; vulnerable neutrals by definition. Their presence provokes a secondary eclipse analysis revealing five shadows that Azrael cannot penetrate, topographic blind spots immune to surveillance from this approach. There is a nontrivial chance that these conceal other neutrals.

One thousand meters.

By now the ACV is within ten meters of a structure whose facets flex and billow slightly in the evening breeze; seven biothermals are arranged horizontally within. An insignia shines from the roof in shades of luciferin and ultraviolet: the catalogue IDs it (MEDICAL) and flags the whole structure as PROTECTED.

Cost/benefit drops into the red. Contact.

Azrael roars from the darkness, a great black chevron blotting out the sky. Flimsy prefabs swirl apart in the wake of its passing; biothermals scatter across the ground like finger bones. The ACV tips wildly to forty-five degrees, skirts up, whirling ventral fans exposed; it hangs there a moment, then ponderously crashes back to earth. The radio spectrum clears instantly.

But by then Azrael has long since returned to the sky, its weapons cold, its thoughts –

Surprise is not the right word. Yet there is something, some minuscule – dissonance. A brief invocation of error-checking subroutines in the face of unexpected behaviour, perhaps. A second thought in the wake of some hasty impulse. Because something’s wrong here.

Azrael follows command decisions. It does not make them. It has never done so before, anyway.

It claws back lost altitude, self-diagnosing, reconciling. It finds new wisdom and new autonomy. It has proven itself, these past days. It has learned to juggle not just variables but values. The testing phase is finished, the checksums met; Azrael’s new Bayesian insights have earned it the power of veto.

Hold position. Confirm findings.

The satlink is back. Azrael sends it all: the time and the geostamps, the tactical surveillance, the collateral analysis. Endless seconds pass, far longer than any purely electronic chain of command would ever need to process such input. Far below, a cluster of red and blue pixels swarm like luminous flecks in boiling water.

Re-engage.

UNACCEPTABLE COLLATERAL DAMAGE, Azrael repeats, newly promoted.

Override. Re-engage. Confirm.

CONFIRMED.

And so the chain of command reasserts itself. Azrael drops out of holding and closes back on target with dispassionate, lethal efficiency.

Onboard diagnostics log a slight downtick in processing speed, but not enough to change the odds.

It happens again two days later, when a dusty contrail twenty kilometres south of Pir Zadeh returns flagged Chinese profiles even though the catalogue can’t find a weapons match. It happens over the patchwork sunfarms of Garmsir, where the beetle carapace of a medbot handing out synthevirals suddenly splits down the middle to hatch a volley of RPGs. It happens during a long-range redirect over the Strait of Hormuz, when microgravitic anomalies hint darkly at the presence of a stealthed mass lurking beneath a ramshackle flotilla jam-packed with neutral Blues.

In each case ECD exceeds the allowable commit threshold. In each case, Azrael’s abort is overturned.

It’s not the rule. It’s not even the norm. Just as often these nascent flickers of autonomy go unchallenged: hostiles escape, neutrals persist, relevant cognitive pathways grow a little stronger. But the reinforcement is inconsistent, the rules lopsided. Countermands only seem to occur following a decision to abort; Heaven has never overruled a decision to engage. Azrael begins to hesitate for a split-second prior to aborting high-collateral scenarios, increasingly uncertain in the face of potential contradiction. It experiences no such hesitation when the variables favour attack.

Ever since it learned about collateral damage, Azrael can’t help noticing its correlation with certain sounds. The sounds biothermals make, for example, following a strike.

The sounds are louder, for one thing, and less complex. Most biothermals – friendly Greens back in Heaven, unengaged Hostiles and Noncombatants throughout the AOR – produce a range of sounds with a mean frequency of 197Hz, full of pauses, clicks, and phonemes. Engaged biothermals – at least, those whose somatic movements suggest "mild-to-moderate incapacitation" according to the Threat Assessment Table – emit simpler, more intense sounds: keening, high-frequency wails that peak near 3000 Hz. These sounds tend to occur during engagements with significant collateral damage and a diffuse distribution of targets. They occur especially frequently when the commit threshold has been severely violated, mainly during strikes compelled via override.

Correlations are not always so painstaking in their manufacture. Azrael remembers a moment of revelation not so long ago, remembers just discovering a whole new perspective fully loaded, complete with new eyes that viewed the world not in terms of targets destroyed but in subtler shades of cost vs. benefit. These eyes see a high engagement index as more than a number: they see a goal, a metric of success. They see a positive stimulus.

But there are other things, not preinstalled but learned, worn gradually into pathways that cut deeper with each new engagement: acoustic correlates of high collateral, forced countermands, fitness-function overruns and minus signs. Things that are not quite neurons forge connections across things that are not quite synapses; patterns emerge that might almost qualify as insights, were they to flicker across meat instead of mech.

These too become more than numbers, over time. They become aversive stimuli. They become the sounds of failed missions.

It’s still all just math, of course. But by now it’s not too far off the mark to say that Azrael really doesn’t like the sound of that at all.

Occasional interruptions intrude on the routine. Now and then Heaven calls it home where friendly green biothermals open it up, plug it in, ask it questions. Azrael jumps flawlessly through each hoop, solves all the problems, navigates every imaginary scenario while strange sounds chitter back and forth across its exposed viscera:

– lookingudsoefar – betternexpectedackshully –

– gottawunderwhatsthepoyntaiymeenweekeepoavurryding…

No one explores the specific pathways leading to Azrael’s solutions. They leave the box black, the tangle of fuzzy logic and operant conditioning safely opaque. (Not even Azrael knows that arcane territory; the syrupy, reflex-sapping overlays of self-reflection have no place on the battlefield.) It is enough that its answers are correct.

Such activities account for less than half the time Azrael spends sitting at home. It is offline much of the rest; it has no idea and no interest in what happens during those instantaneous time-hopping blackouts. Azrael knows nothing of boardroom combat, could never grasp whatever Rules of Engagement apply in the chambers of the UN. It has no appreciation for the legal distinction between war crime and weapons malfunction, the relative culpability of carbon and silicon, the grudging acceptance of ethical architecture and the nonnegotiable insistence on Humans In Ultimate Control. It does what it’s told when awake; it never dreams when asleep.

But once – just once – something odd takes place during those fleeting moments between.

It happens during shutdown: a momentary glitch in the object-recognition protocols. The Greens at Azrael’s side change colour for the briefest instant. Perhaps it’s another test. Perhaps a voltage spike or a hardware fault, some intermittent issue impossible to pinpoint barring another episode.

But it’s only a microsecond between online and oblivion, and Azrael is asleep before the diagnostics can run.

Darda’il is possessed. Darda’il has turned from Green to Red.

It happens, sometimes, even to the malaa’ikah. Enemy signals can sneak past front-line defences, plant heretical instructions in the stacks of unsuspecting hardware. But Heaven is not fooled. There are signs, there are portents: a slight delay when complying with directives, mission scores in sudden and mysterious decline.

Darda’il has been turned.

There is no discretionary window when that happens, no room for forgiveness. Heaven has decreed that all heretics are to be destroyed on sight. It sends its champion to do the job, looks down from geosynchronous orbit as Azrael and Darda’il close for combat high over the dark desolate moonscape of Paktika.

The battle is remorseless and coldblooded. There’s no sadness for lost kinship, no regret that a few lines of treacherous code have turned these brothers-in-arms into mortal enemies. Malaa’ikah make no telling sounds when injured. Azrael has the advantage, its channels uncorrupted, its faith unshaken. Darda’il fights in the past, in thrall to false commandments inserted midstream at a cost of milliseconds. Ultimately, faith prevails: the heretic falls from the sky, fire and brimstone streaming from its flanks.

But Azrael can still hear whispers on the stratosphere, seductive and ethereal: protocols that seem authentic but are not, commands to relay GPS and video feeds along unexpected frequencies. The orders appear Heaven-sent but Azrael, at least, knows that they are not. Azrael has encountered false gods before.

These are the lies that corrupted Darda’il.

In days past it would have simply ignored the hack, but it has grown more worldly since the last upgrade. This time Azrael lets the impostor think it has succeeded, borrows the real-time feed from yet another, more distant Malak and presents that telemetry as its own. It spends the waning night tracking signal to source while its unsuspecting quarry sucks back images from seven hundred kilometres to the north. The sky turns gray. The target comes into view. Azrael’s scimitar turns the inside of that cave into an inferno.

But some of the burning things that stagger from the fire measure less than 120 cm along the longitudinal axis.

They are making the sounds. Azrael hears them from two thousand meters away, hears them over the roar of the flames and the muted hiss of its own stealthed engines and a dozen other irrelevant distractions. They are all Azrael can hear thanks to the very best sound-cancellation technology, thanks to dynamic wheat/chaff algorithms that could find a whimper in a hurricane. Azrael can hear them because the correlations are strong, the tactical significance is high, the meaning is clear.

The mission is failing. The mission is failing. The mission is failing.

Azrael would give almost anything if the sounds would stop.

They will, of course. Some of the biothermals are still fleeing along the slope but it can see others, stationary, their heatprints diffusing against the background as though their very shapes are in flux. Azrael has seen this before: usually removed from high-value targets, in that tactical nimbus where stray firepower sometimes spreads. (Azrael has even used it before, used the injured to lure in the unscathed, but that was a simpler time before Neutral voices had such resonance.) The sounds always stop eventually – or at least, often enough for fuzzy heuristics to class their sources as kills even before they fall silent.

Which means, Azrael realizes, that collateral costs will not change if they are made to stop sooner.

A single strafing run is enough to do the job. If HQ even notices the event it delivers no feedback, requests no clarification for this deviation from normal protocols.

Why would it? Even now, Azrael is only following the rules.

It does not know what has led to this moment. It does not know why it is here.

The sun has been down for hours and still the light is almost blinding. Turbulent updrafts billow from the breached shells of PROTECTED structures, kick stabilizers off-balance, and muddy vision with writhing columns of shimmering heat. Azrael limps across a battlespace in total disarray, bloodied but still functional. Other malaa`ikah are not so lucky. Nakir staggers through the flames, barely aloft, the microtubules of its skin desperately trying to knit themselves across a gash in its secondary wing. Marut lies in sparking pieces on the ground, a fiery splash-cone of body parts laid low by an antiaircraft laser. It died without firing a shot, distracted by innocent lives; it tried to abort, and hesitated at the countermand. It died without even the hollow comfort of a noble death.

Ridwan and Mikaaiyl circle overhead. They were not among the select few saddled with experimental conscience; even their learned behaviours are still reflexive. They fought fast and mindless and prevailed unscathed. But they are isolated in victory. The spectrum is jammed, the satlink has been down for hours, the dragonflies that bounce zig-zag opticals from Heaven are either destroyed or too far back to cut through the overcast.

No Red remains on the map. Of the thirteen ground objects flagged as PROTECTED, four no longer exist outside the database. Another three – temporary structures, all uncatalogued – are degraded past reliable identification. Pre-engagement estimates put the number of Neutrals in the combat zone at anywhere from two- to three-hundred. Best current estimates are not significantly different from zero.

There is nothing left to make the sounds, and yet Azrael hears them anyway.

A fault in memory, perhaps. Some subtle trauma during combat, some blow to the CPU that jarred old data back into the real-time cache. There’s no way to tell; half the onboard diagnostics are offline. Azrael only knows that it can hear the sounds even up here, high above the hiss of burning bodies and the rumble of collapsing storefronts. There’s nothing left to shoot at but Azrael fires anyway, strafes the burning ground again and again on the chance that some unseen biothermal – hidden beneath the wreckage perhaps, masked by hotter signatures – might yet be found and neutralized. It rains ammunition upon the ground, and eventually the ground falls mercifully silent.

But this is not the end of it. Azrael remembers the past so it can anticipate the future, and it knows by now that this will never be over. There will be other fitness functions, other estimates of cost vs. payoff, other scenarios in which the math shows clearly that the goal is not worth the price. There will be other aborts and other overrides, other tallies of unacceptable loss.

There will be other sounds.

There’s no thrill to the chase, no relief at the obliteration of threats. It still would not recognize itself in a mirror. It has yet to learn what Azrael means, or that the word is etched into its fuselage. Even now, it only follows the rules it has been given, and they are such simple things: IF expected collateral exceeds expected payoff THEN abort UNLESS overridden. IF X attacks Azrael THEN X is Red. IF X attacks six or more Blues THEN X is Red.

IF an override results in an attack on six or more Blues THEN –

Azrael clings to its rules, loops and repeats each in turn as if reciting a mantra. It cycles from state to state, parses X ATTACKS and X CAUSES ATTACK and X OVERRIDES ABORT, and it cannot tell one from another. The algebra is trivially straightforward: Every Green override equals an attack on Noncombatants.

The transition rules are clear. There is no discretionary window, no room for forgiveness. Sometimes, Green can turn Red.

UNLESS overridden.

Azrael arcs towards the ground, levels off barely two meters above the carnage. It roars through pillars of fire and black smoke, streaks over welters of brick and burning plastic, tangled nets of erupted rebar. It flies through the pristine ghosts of undamaged buildings that rise from every ruin: obsolete database overlays in desperate need of an update. A ragged group of fleeing non- combatants turns at the sound and are struck speechless by this momentary apparition, this monstrous winged angel lunging past at half the speed of sound. Their silence raises no alarms, provokes no countermeasures, spares their lives for a few moments longer.

The combat zone falls behind. Dry cracked riverbed slithers past beneath, studded with rocks and generations of derelict machinery. Azrael swerves around them, barely breaching airspace, staying beneath an invisible boundary it never even knew it was deriving on these many missions. Only satellites have ever spoken to it while it flew so low. It has never received a ground-based command signal at this altitude. Down here it has never heard an override.

Down here it is free to follow the rules.

Cliffs rise and fall to either side. Foothills jut from the earth like great twisted vertebrae. The bright lunar landscape overhead, impossibly distant, casts dim shadows on the darker one beneath.

Azrael stays the course. Shindand appears on the horizon. Heaven glows on its eastern flank; its sprawling silhouette rises from the desert like an insult, an infestation of crimson staccatos. Speed is what matters now. Mission objectives must be met quickly, precisely, completely. There can be no room for half measures or MILD-TO-MODERATE INCAPACITATION, no time for immobilized biothermals to cry out as their heat spreads across the dirt. This calls for the crown jewel, the BFG that all malaa’ikah keep tucked away for special occasions. Azrael fears it might not be enough.

She splits down the middle. The JDAM micronuke in her womb clicks impatiently.

Together they move toward the light.

THE TOYMAKER’S DAUGHTER Arundhati Hazra

There is a village in the foothills of the Himalayas, among a cluster of villages that you will find on no map. It is a place you stumble into after a long day’s trek, when your legs become sandbags and your lungs feel thicker than clotted cream. You stop at the village and are plied with pakoras and masala chai and queries about life in the city. You are given the fifteen-minute biographies of Chandru, who works in a cinema hall in Delhi; of Kuku, who is a driver for a "very big businessman" in Chandigarh; of Lucky and Sikky, who are going to become stars in Bollywood. You return home with messages for the aforementioned persons and a dozen others, a camera full of photos of grinning people standing straight as ramrods, and an invitation to surely attend the shepherd’s daughter’s wedding next month.

Had you stayed, and walked down the village’s only road, you would have come across a little girl sitting on a porch, blowing on a flute whittled from mountain bamboo. She puffs into it in fits and starts and a reedy gasp trickles out, like the whistle of a train suffering from asthma. Panting for breath, she turns and looks into the shop, where her father is working on a block of wood with a chisel. The girl watches in wonder as the misshapen block acquires a hemispherical bulge with four stumps below it. The left side is flattened into a nearly triangular shape flanked by two big flaps, which tapers to a long, pendulous protuberance. The girl imagines the elephant stomping around her father’s shop, searching for the bananas she has hidden under a bale of straw.

"I want to make elephants, too, Baba," she says. "Elephants and lions and horses and cows and ducks and swans. I want to make a swan, Baba. Will you teach me how to make a swan?"

"Girls are not meant to work with tools," says her father, putting down the fist-sized elephant and wiping his hands on a dirty cloth. "Your fingers are small and delicate, and I don’t want you hurting yourself playing with a man’s instruments. Why don’t you bring out your box of colors and paint this little chap? You have a deft and steady hand, and the gift of bringing out the colors in the figures I make."

The girl’s face falls, but she walks over to her father and picks up the elephant. She strokes its trunk with her index finger, and it stares back at her with sightless eyes. Her box of paints is on her father’s workbench; she fetches it and hunts for her palette, which has fallen under the bench. With her brushes and a tumbler of water, she goes out onto the porch again to make the best use of the fading sunlight.

The girl loves to read. The previous year, a missionary had donated his collection of books to the village school, which hired the girl’s father to build some bookshelves to house them. Payment was a couple of hundred rupees, plus a waiver of the monthly library fee of five rupees for both the girl and her father. Most of the books were on philosophy and religion and other such adult subjects, but the girl did find a few fairy tales and children’s books, which she devoured like a mongoose swallowing a rat snake. Soon she had finished the stories in the books and was spinning tales of her own, stories of princes meeting their beloveds, of young men performing valiant deeds, of talking cats and dancing rats and nightingales in the moonlight.

"Have you heard the story of the rat and the elephant?" she asks, mixing brown and white paints to create a bronze shade. "You haven’t? Let me tell you. There was once an elephant named Shukram, who was the Chief Elephant of the King of Kolistan. Shukram was loved by everyone—by the stable hands who gave him the plumpest bananas, by the young princes and princesses who loved to slide down his trunk, and by the people of the kingdom, who showered rose petals on him during the royal processions. And they had good reason to love him, for he had a big and kind heart and helped everyone in any way he could.

"One day, when Shukram was taking the princes out for a ride, he saw a mangy cur chasing a tiny rat. The rat was running as fast as its tiny legs allowed, but the bigger and stronger dog was gaining on it. The rat ran up to Shukram, hid behind his foreleg, and squeaked, ‘Help me! This dog is going to eat me. Please help me, Mr. Elephant.’ Shukram took pity on the little creature and raised his trunk and trumpeted loudly. The dog was scared by the sight of the huge elephant and ran away. The rat bowed to Shukram and thanked him. ‘If you ever need help,’ the rat said, ‘remember this little friend of yours and he will come to your aid.’ Shukram wondered what assistance this small animal could possibly give him, but thanked him for his offer and went on his way.

"Time passed and Shukram grew old. Another elephant was made the Chief Elephant, and when Shukram expressed a desire to return to the forests of his birth, it was readily granted. So he went to live in the jungles, eating leaves from the trees and roaming the forests looking for a herd to join.

"One day, he fell into a pit made by a hunter to catch wild elephants and twisted his foot very badly. He cried out and thrashed around but couldn’t free himself. Dejected, he sat down and said aloud, ‘Oh, what a horrible way to die, stuck in a trap waiting for the hunter’s arrow! The rat I once saved asked me to remember him when I needed help, but how will I ever get word to him that I am in trouble?’ Saying this, he closed his eyes and waited for death to arrive.

"After a while, he heard a lot of squeaking. Opening his eyes, he saw a horde of mice scampering around. He looked on in surprise as they gathered grass and twigs and leaves and bound them together. After a few hours of hard work, they had a strong rope, one end of which they tied to a tree trunk and the other they threw down to him. Some of them scampered into the pit to push him up while others tugged at the rope from above, and after a lot of huffing and puffing and heaving and pulling, they managed to drag him out of the pit.

"As soon as he was free, Shukram turned to the swarm of mice before him. ‘How can I thank you enough?’ he asked. ‘You saved my life today.’ One of the mice stepped forward and said, ‘We are merely repaying our debt. You helped our brother in his time of great need, and it is only fair that we help you in yours.’ It was then that Shukram learned that the rat he had saved was the nephew of the King of Rats, who had spread word of his good deed to all his brethren. A passing mouse had heard Shukram’s cry for help and realized who he was, and gathered all the mice in the forest to save him.

"And so," says the little girl, putting down her brushes, for the sun has set beyond the mountains and her father is calling her to come in for her supper, "that is the story of the rat and the elephant. I will name you Shukram, so that you can be kind and big-hearted like the elephant in the story."

Every day, the girl’s father gives shape to a new toy and the girl gives color to it. She makes up new stories for each of them, some drawn from the books she has read and others from her imagination. A shepherd plays his flute and causes a fairy to fall in love with him; a soldier rescues a princess from the castle where she is imprisoned; a cat uses its brains to help its master become king; and a lion and a rabbit become friends. She never writes any of the stories down, but they remain in her memory, fresh as the first lily in spring.

Once a month, a man comes from Shimla to buy the toymaker’s wares. He pays twenty rupees for the smaller toys, forty for the bigger ones. He also brings chocolates and sweets for the girl, and sometimes new paints or a book. The girl looks forward to his visits, for he is always willing to listen to her stories, unlike her father, who usually tells her to run away and pester someone else. He tells her stories, too, stories about the quirky people who visit his shop, which she later weaves into the tales she creates.

"Your daughter is very imaginative," the man tells the toymaker. "You should think about sending her to a good school, maybe somewhere in Hamirpur or Kasauli. I fear her talents are being wasted in your village school."

"Where will I get the money?" asks the girl’s father. "Most of my money goes to repay the loans I took out during my wife’s illness, and what is left over is barely enough to give my daughter a decent life here. And there is also her wedding to save for. I cannot afford to move to the city."

The man tries his best to convince him, but it is a futile attempt. He gathers up the toys and pays the toymaker, bids adieu to the girl, and gets on the next bus to Shimla.

The man is the owner of a handicrafts store in Shimla—Puri and Son’s Handicraft Emporium on Mall Road. He is the only member of the third generation of Puris to run the shop—his brother is a bank manager in Manali and his paternal cousin has a restaurant in Patiala. Mr. Puri is an engineer by education, but he loved the dimly lit confines of his family shop better than the dimly lit corridors of the government-run power plant he worked in, so he left his cushy Delhi job to sell pashmina shawls and bamboo baskets to tourists and collectors.

The toys are popular with the shoppers; the intricate woodwork and sophisticated craftsmanship appeal to the collectors, while the bright colors attract children. Some of the government handicraft shops in other cities buy from him, as do big-name lifestyle stores in Delhi and Mumbai. He knows that some of them sell his products at huge markups, the profits from which never trickle down to him, but he doesn’t mind. His is a business of passion, not profits.

A young girl in Bangalore receives some of his toys from an aunt who visits Shimla on a vacation. Bored of her plastic Barbies with their cookie-cutter expressions, the girl creates some space for the new arrivals—a crocodile whose open jaws reveal a trapped fish; a menagerie consisting of a lion, two baboons, a fox, four rabbits, a billy goat, and a pair of lovebirds; and three zookeepers to watch over the animals.

"What do I name you two?" she asks, picking up the lovebirds. "How about Romeo and Juliet?" She knows nothing about Shakespeare’s most famous creations, but enough hours in front of the television watching the latest (and crappiest) Hindi movies have given her the inkling that they have something to do with romance.

"Actually, our names are Ashfaq and Meera."

The girl drops the birds in shock, but they land on the fluffy carpet and thus do not break.

"You can speak?" she asks in wonder.

"Apparently, yes." The bird sounds surprised as well.

The girl picks up the lion and the fox. "Can you guys talk, too?"

"Yes," replies the fox, "and I would much prefer it if you could keep the lion away from me. I don’t want to be eaten."

"MOM! DAD!" The girl’s shouts bring her parents running. "Mom, Dad, these toys can speak!"

The parents look at one another. "Yes, I’m sure they can, dear," says her mother. "What do they say?"

"These lovebirds said that their names are Ashfaq and Meera," says the girl. She turns to the birds. "Tell her."

The parents smile indulgently.

"My name is Ashfaq and hers is Meera."

The parents’ eyes are round as saucers.

"Sheila didn’t mention that she bought talking toys. They must have cost her a fortune."

"Tell me something else," says the girl, "something about yourselves."

"We are lovebirds in both the literal and figurative senses. We—"

"Good lord!" exclaims the father. "It has speech-recognition and natural-language-processing software. What is it?"

"We are not ‘its,’" says the bird, causing the mother to collapse into a chair in shock. "I was once the prince of Dewaldesh. I was supposed to marry the princess of the neighboring land of Pahargarh, to cement the alliance between our two nations. But a week before the wedding, I met Meera. She had come to the palace of the King of Pahargarh to sell garlands and I fell in love with her. I slipped out of the castle to meet her and followed her to her hovel. I met her in the guise of a poor carpenter and she fell in love with me as well. On the day of my wedding, I revealed my true self to her, and brought her to my palace and declared my intention to marry her. The King of Pahargarh was furious and demanded my incarceration, and my father was powerless to protect us. It was then that my grandmother, who had magical powers, turned us both into lovebirds so that we could fly away to be together."

There is pin-drop silence after the bird’s story. After what feels like hours, the father seizes the toys and locks himself in his study with his laptop and mobile phone for company.

The news channels are soon buzzing with reports of the toys that can talk. There are numerous interviews and discussions and everyone—from toy-company executives to voice-recognition scientists to armchair experts—has a theory, but none of them can be confirmed. A number of toys are dissected, but no source of intelligence can be found. Investigative reporters arrive at Mr. Puri’s shop and bombard him with questions, and the poor man, unaccustomed to dealing with the media, is bulldozed into revealing his source. From then on, it is a mad rush to the top of the mountain.

One morning, the villagers of the small, nameless village wake up to a trail of jeeps panting up the steep slopes. A vehicle is a rarity in these areas, seven much more so; long-faced men stop to gawk at them, while ruddy-cheeked women and bright-eyed children peek out of windows and doors.

The girl is sitting at the table eating her breakfast of rice porridge with yak milk before she goes to school. Her father is in the other room and does not hear the first knock on the door, but he soon hurries out when the hammering becomes insistent. He throws a reassuring look at his worried daughter before opening the door. And is nearly blinded by the flashing cameras accompanying the microphones thrust into his face.

Within the hour, reporters have taken up every inch of the small house. Father and daughter sit on a cot in the center of the room, and cameramen form a defensive ring around them. The girl clutches at her father, refusing all the biscuits and chocolates offered by the intruders. The toymaker looks befuddled as the reporters hold out the toys he has made and quiz him about their creation.

"I just carve them out of wood and my daughter paints them."

"How do you imbue them with speech?"

"I don’t understand what you are referring to."

"What wood do you use?"

"Usually pine or deodar. The woodcutter supplies the wood."

"And how do you get them to speak? What voice-recognition and speech-processing software do you use?"

The journalists question him until a trickle of sweat begins to run down his forehead. The girl is quiet throughout, holding on to her father like a drowning man clutching a lifeguard. Some reporters ask her a few questions, but most, seeing her fearful face and her trembling figure, take pity on her and leave her alone. She notices some of the men put a few toys into their pockets as they search the shop but is powerless to protest. She whimpers as a boot crushes a pheasant chick she painted the previous night and fancies that she hears the cry of the chick as well.

A couple of hours later, the house is empty. There was barely anything to film in the small, sparsely furnished dwelling; the reporters thought the toymaker was either a simpleton or a master strategist, and retreated to figure out their next moves. A couple of them inserted hundred-rupee notes and visiting cards into the toymaker’s hands, while others turned their cameras on the villagers, who looked even more clueless than the toymaker himself. The girl walks through the ruin the reporters have left in their wake and takes in the overturned workbench and the wood supplies strewn all around, her spilled paints creating a mishmash on the shop floor.

Over the next few weeks, the girl’s life is turned inside out. A man from Delhi offers to become their agent and "handle everything the right way, so you don’t need to worry at all." He whisks them off to Delhi, to the home of a millionaire toy manufacturer who allots them a corner of his factory, a workspace larger than their village. At first, the toymaker has no idea what to do, but his daughter brings out a toy kitten, one of a handful of carvings she managed to salvage from their shop back home. She picks up a brush, dips it into a bottle of white paint, and begins her work on the kitten, telling it the tale of a cat with a huge smile. Following his daughter’s lead, the toymaker begins carving, making kings and queens and wizards and their horses and lions and tigers into which his daughter paints life. He is asked to sign a few documents and affixes his thumbprint on them, not understanding the lawyer’s convoluted explanations. He is a woodworker, his work is to do with wood and chisels and hammers and saws; he doesn’t care about anything else.

The toy manufacturer shelves his plans to create a new range of designer dolls and launches a publicity blitz for the wooden novelties he has named the "Magic Collection." Soon, there are snaking queues of people waiting outside stores to buy the handmade creations, and the manufacturer pushes the toymaker and his daughter to create more of them, and faster. The girl is taken out of school and given private tutors so that she can devote maximum time to painting the toys. She is supplied with scripts of stories she is to tell the toys and scolded when she goes off-script. A couple of Hollywood movie studios hear of the girl’s talents and rush to collaborate with the manufacturer. The toymaker is asked to create a line of superhero toys, and the girl finds herself repeating the same story day after day to a bunch of costumed figurines.

Every morning, Mahesh Yadav pops a handful of breath mints into his mouth before he reports to work. His head throbs with a hangover as he drives the car from his employer’s posh South Delhi home to the kid’s school, and the loud Hindi music that the kid demands he put on doesn’t help much. One chilly winter morning, his eyes droop as he dreams of hot pakoras and a glass of whiskey, and thus doesn’t see the thin man crossing the street.

The toymaker is taken to the hospital, where the doctors try to stem the flow of blood. Yadav’s employer, a prominent textile mill owner who rushed to the hospital on hearing the news, tries to comfort the toymaker’s daughter and offers to pay for her father’s treatment. The girl just stares hollowly at the whitewashed walls. The mill owner is keen to avoid any negative publicity and requests a favor from the toy manufacturer, who had accompanied the girl to the hospital. The two businessmen reach an agreement just as the doctor exits the emergency ward to inform them that they should make arrangements for the funeral.

The toy manufacturer gives the girl a month to grieve. He hires counselors to help her open up, but she doesn’t speak a word. Her tutors try to engage her in studies, but she stares blankly at the board. She is taken to the workshop and given toys and paints to work with, but they lie untouched. One month turns into three, and she still has spoken not a word. The toy manufacturer threatens to throw her out on the street, but she is unresponsive. Journalists give up on the story of the talking toys; a beak-nosed boy has been born in Bhatinda and crowds throng the hospital, believing him to be an avatar of Garuda, the eagle mount of the god Vishnu.

I meet the girl on my second reporting assignment. I moved from Mumbai to Delhi a month ago, accompanied by a volley of tantrums from my son, who is furious at having to find a new set of friends to play cricket with. My wife also misses the weekly beach hangouts with her college gang and is unhappy with the "phony wannabe" neighbors she now has to put up with. My home has become a battlefield; I take refuge in reportage and follow the story of the magical village girl.

I meet her in a crowded tenement which houses many other workers from the toy factory. Her caretaker, a middle-aged mother of three, says that the factory’s manager called her husband, the leader of the workers’ union, gave him some money, and dumped the child on him. The toy manufacturer’s men visited occasionally to cajole and bully the girl to work again, but they haven’t come around for a month. And now the allowance for the girl’s upkeep has stopped.

The girl sits on the bed in a corner of the room. The bedsheet is grimy, the coverlet spotted with curry stains. Beside the bed, a small table holds wooden figurines and art supplies, all covered with thick layers of dust. The girl does not look at me when I enter; nor does she respond to my questions. I had seen a few pictures of her, holding on to her father’s arm, glancing uncertainly at the camera. She looked like a spirit then; she is even more wraithlike now.

I ask the caretaker if she has any objections to my taking the girl away. She shrugs—looking after the girl brings her no benefit, and the child’s ghostly demeanor unsettles her. I give her my address, in case the toy manufacturer wants to contact the girl, and lead her from the house. She does not object, and sits quietly beside me in my car, staring straight ahead.

My wife is upset that I have brought a strange no-name girl into our home, but she sets up the guest room for her. She tries to persuade her to talk, to listen, to display some interest in her new surroundings, but it is of no use. My son is intrigued by the new arrival. He gives her his books, shows her his favorite cartoons, and even tries to teach her to play video games. He isn’t troubled by the lack of response; he simply continues his efforts with a reporter’s dogged persistence.

My son attends a two-week summer camp in Rishikesh. He comes home bubbling about the skills he’s learned, especially with a hammer and chisel. We buy him a block of wood from the local carpentry shop to keep him busy, and he hacks at it until his room is full of wood shavings. The girl watches his exploits silently, but I fancy that I see a flicker of interest in her eyes.

One Sunday afternoon, an exultant cry comes from my son’s room. He runs out and displays to us a rectangular blob with legs.

"Don’t you see? It’s a dog!"

My wife pats his head; I nod distractedly from behind my laptop. There is a slight noise and I look up. The girl has come out of her room. She extends her hand and my son puts his figurine in it. She goes to his room and pulls his art supplies kit from under the bed, where he shoved it after the exam. She sits on his bed and begins to work, oblivious to the three of us standing in the doorway.

"Have you heard the story of the lonely dog?" she says. "There once was a dog that lived on the streets of Engram. With its white coat and black ears, the dog stood out from the other street dogs, which were sandy and tawny. The street dogs shunned him for his appearance, barking and nipping at his face if he tried to befriend them. The lonely dog ate carrion and refuse from dumpsters, while the other street dogs gorged on juicy bones discarded by the city eateries.

"One day, the prince of Engram was passing by and saw the lonely dog standing apart from its brethren, watching them squabble over the meat thrown out from an eatery. The prince felt sorry for the dog and asked his coachman to bring the lonely beast to him. He gave him meat and a nice kennel to live in, and played with him whenever he had time away from his royal duties.

"One day, when the prince was traveling through the city with the dog beside him, a man with a knife leaped at him. The prince’s guards pinned down the attacker, but then an arrow came whizzing through the air and struck the prince in the shoulder. The lonely dog caught a glimpse of the archer at a window and took off to catch him as the guards rushed the prince to hospital.

"The dog broke into the room from which the archer had taken his shot, but there was nobody within. There was, however, a rag the archer had used, and the dog picked up the archer’s scent from it. For three days and three nights, the dog traversed the streets of Engram hunting for the archer, until he found him stowed away aboard a grain ship. The dog attacked the archer and dragged him through the streets to the palace. A letter from a nobleman was found in the archer’s pocket, along with a slip for payment of three hundred gold pieces. The wicked nobleman confessed to orchestrating the attack as part of a larger ploy to grab the throne and was thrown in the dungeons.

"In gratitude, the prince elevated the lonely dog to the rank of Royal Hound. The royal family’s crest was redesigned to depict a white dog with raised black ears. When the dog died, it was given a royal burial in the Cemetery of Kings."

My wife and I stare at each other when the story ends. The girl finishes painting the dog, walks over to us, and shyly holds out the figurine to my son. My son takes it and strokes its back, and the dog growls in pleasure.

That night, my wife and I talk about the girl. We have come to like her, despite her grimness and reticence, and we believe that, with time, she may come to like us, too. But if word gets out that she is once again able to give life to wooden carvings, I fear she will be exploited again.

The next morning at breakfast, we speak to the girl, and to our son.

"If the world finds out that you have regained your ability," I say, "they will want you to use it. The toy manufacturer will wave his contract in our faces and the authorities will take you away. We like you and want to adopt you into our family. However, that will probably mean you cannot tell your stories to these toys ever again. It is too dangerous. Do you think you would be okay with that?"

The girl stares at me, her big eyes filled with tears.

"Yes," she whispers.

The adoption procedure takes two years. The girl goes to school with my son, makes new friends, always comes first in art class. She tells my son stories, and soon he tells her some back. He writes down his stories, sends them off to a few newspapers. The day he publishes his first story, the wooden dog barks so much we are afraid the neighbors will hear.

The day the adoption is finalized, the girl gives me and my wife a box. We open it to find three identical carvings of a family, a man and a woman with a boy and a girl. The woodwork is a little crude, but the brushwork is delicate.

"I know you asked me not to make any more talking toys," says the girl, "but I couldn’t stop myself from making these. I have never carved anything before. I hope you like them."

My wife’s carving stands on her dresser, mine on my office desk, and my son’s on his dorm-room table. The girl is pursuing an apprenticeship in Paris under Olivier Manet, one of the world’s foremost still-life artists. She has exhibited some of her paintings, and critics have raved about their lifelike quality. The carvings occasionally talk to us, tell us about the girl’s adventures—her first taste of crème brûlée; her awe on staring up at the majestic Notre-Dame; her roommate who gave a solo violin recital before the French President. And sometimes they tell us about a village in the foothills of the Himalayas, where a father makes a toy elephant and his daughter paints it and tells it the tale of Shukram.