Buck Rogers 1 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (6 page)

But when the time came for the building of that kind of creature, technology had taken a turn in a different direction. Instead of furnishing the ordinary household with a robot who would stand over a washtub by the hour, scrubbing dirty linens, the technologists had invented washing machines with their own controls to do the job. Later, instead of building humanlike robots and teaching them to fly airplanes, the technologists had invented autopilots and built them directly into the instrumentation of the planes. And so it had gone—the traditional, man-like robot of fancy and fiction from the Tin Woodsman onward, had been a scientific dead end, bypassed in the march of progress.

Or so it had been in Buck’s day.

But now, there trotted into the sterile chamber a being whose very presence and existence disproved this theory of science. For here was a robot, made more or less along the lines of the fanciful ideas of Buck’s own boyhood.

It was barely three feet tall, made in a humanlike but far from perfectly human form. It held its head at an angle and tottered around the room in a manner that brought Buck to the brink of laughter despite the desperate nature of his situation. For all that it was a thing of metal and glass, the robot reminded Buck of the caperings of a chimpanzee in the Chicago Zoo half a millennium before.

“What
is
it?” Buck asked Huer.

“Your drone,” the scientist replied. “His name is Twiki.”

“He’s my—
what
?” Buck was flabbergasted.

While the two men spoke, the robot went about its business, totally ignoring them. It crossed the sterile chamber, opened another door and tottered into the next room.

“For the duration of your debriefing and determination,” Dr. Huer said, “he will act as your personal aide.”

As Buck stood in gaping amazement, the drone tottered back into the sterile chamber and the door slid shut behind him. The robot was unchanged, but now he had an odd object hanging from a cable around his neck. The thing was not very large—smaller than a breadbox, Buck thought to himself, yet rather larger than a deck of playing cards.

It was clearly a highly sophisticated machine, with complex circuitry, controls and indicator lights that flashed continually, glowing brightly, dimming, flashing suddenly and then disappearing again. Yet—Buck wondered if it was his imagination at work or a real phenomenon he observed—the ever-changing pattern of lights bore an uncanny similarity to the features of a human face.

Then a voice came from the odd, boxlike object. It spoke not to Buck but to his scientist-companion, in a voice of astonishing richness, soft and benevolent, soothing and serene. Yet it was also a voice of absolute authority.

“Good morning, Doctor Theopolis,” Huer greeted the box. “It’s a lovely day.”

“Thank you,” the box replied. “I did my best today.”

Buck gaped in amazement as the gray-headed scientist and the flashing lighted box conducted a pleasant social conversation. The scientist turned toward Buck and introduced the newcomer.

“Dr. Theopolis is a member of our Computer Council and in addition to his other duties, he is personally responsible for all environmental controls here within the Inner City.”

The box said, “I’m introducing a pale hint of mauve into the sunset this evening. Not quite so deep as amethyst, but I’m trying for something more subtle, more of the texture of carefully roasted cinnamon.”

The box’s lights flashed with something that Buck Rogers had to identify as an expression of preening self-satisfaction.

“I do hope the Captain can watch it with us,” Dr. Theopolis continued. “It’s truly going to be lovely, and one does always strive to capture the approbation of a new audience.”

Buck stared at the box, then murmured to Dr. Huer, “I’d do some checking if I were you. Find out who’s programming that thing and maybe check
him
out a little.”

The box indicated that it had heard every syllable. “Captain Rogers, it is we of the Council who do the programming for the entire city. Kindly reserve your opinions for your own delectation. Now,” and the machine made a sound that can only be identified as clearing its throat, “shall we get down to cases?”

Dr. Huer rose and indicated that he was about to leave. “I shall offer you a little word of advice before I go, Captain Rogers. These drones, or quads as they are sometimes known, have been programmed by each other, over a span of many generations. We have been saved by them, in a sense. The mistakes that we made in areas like our environment have been entirely turned over to them.

“They averted what must have been certain doom for the earth, Captain. Little by little, they bring us back to where we will not have to depend entirely on other planets for food and water. A quad is not a human. But you
can
hurt their feelings—their circuitry and their programming include emotions. It is their sensitivity that separates them from mere machines.”

Huer stepped through the doorway. As he disappeared he called back to Buck, “I’ll see you in approximately sixteen hours.”

“Sixteen hours!” Buck leaped to his feet. “Sixteen hours! Wait a minute!”

He started after Dr. Huer, jumped back just in time to avoid being clobbered by the automatically closing panel. “If you think I’m going to sit here talking to a package of Christmas lights for sixteen hours—”

“Sit down, Captain,” the soothing voice of Dr. Theopolis came to Buck. “Now let’s try to be as pleasant to each other as we can, eh? Please don’t snap at me, and I shall try to be sympathetic to your plight. That’s a good fellow. Thank you.”

Buck stared at the box of flashing lights, dumbfounded.

Dr. Theopolis spoke to the quad from whose neck he hung. “Be a good drone, Twiki . . . and place me on the table where I can get a good look at the Captain. While Captain Rogers and I begin to get acquainted, perhaps you could offer him a bit of liquid refreshment.”

“I don’t need any refreshment!” Buck snapped.

“Of course you do,” the soothing voice rolled on. “You’re extremely dehydrated from your ordeal. Sit down, Buck—do you mind, may I call you Buck?”

While Buck stared, Twiki removed Dr. Theopolis from around his neck and placed him carefully on the table. The little robot marched mechanically through the sliding door.

“Well, now,” the box of lights said, “what an attractive man you are, Buck. My word, are those eyes of yours
blue?”

Buck slid slowly back into his chair. He felt as if he’d been handed a live concussion grenade and asked to make friends with it. “Blue,” he murmured, “that’s right.”

“How truly rare blue eyes are these days,” Dr. Theopolis said.

“My mother had blue eyes,” Buck snapped back. “Look, can we blast right through this rainbow and get to it? I’ve been trying for twenty-four hours to find out where I am . . .
who
I am . . . who
you
are . . . Can I please have some
answers
?”

“Certainly, Buck,” the box of lights replied. “That’s why I’m here. To answer your questions.”

“Great! Then let’s have it, the straight data!”

The lights flashed like a patient man nodding his head to calm an impatient adolescent. “First, you are Captain Buck Rogers. According to your ship’s chronometer you left Earth in 1987 on a mission of exploration—”

“That much I know,” Buck broke it. “Try telling me something I
don’t
already know!”

“Well, if preliminary data hold up, it appears you have returned to Earth five hundred and four years later, to be precise. Buck—you, we, all of us—are now in the twenty-fifth century.”

Buck stared at Theopolis, then turned to the drone Twiki who had returned and stood beside him with a glass in his metallic hand.

“I believe I will take that drink now, thanks. In fact, thanks very much!” He reached for the liquid and tilted back his head.

Elsewhere, in an efficiently furnished corridor, Dr. Huer was carrying on a consultation with Colonel Wilma Deering of the Intercept Squadron. They walked briskly along the corridor, almost trotting. Dr. Huer had just made a statement and Wilma Deering responded.

“I don’t believe a word of it!”

“I’m not easily duped,” Dr. Huer replied.

“It’s not my opinion of you,” the smartly uniformed officer said. “But my respect for those pirates who have been decimating my squadron. The pirates would do anything to prevent our completing a treaty with Draconia. Anything including planting a phony man-from-the-past on us, for heaven knows what purposes of espionage or sabotage.”

While Dr. Huer and Colonel Deering continued their conference, Buck Rogers continued his confrontation with Dr. Theopolis. Still later, while Buck rested from his ordeal, the others met. The setting was a sleek, modernistic office, comfortable yet efficient. Dr. Theopolis rested on a desk between Colonel Wilma Deering and the gray-headed scientist Huer.

“You are wrong, Wilma,” Theopolis’ smooth voice poured from the box, “Buck Rogers is not a pirate or a plant of the pirates.”

“It’s Colonel Deering, not Wilma, to you, if you please.” The officer was clearly not happy with the situation. “And I’ll rely,” she continued, “on the full Council’s judgment, not yours alone.”

“My dear,” the box replied, “I personally interrogated Captain Rogers. You can take my word for it. He’s a wonnnnnnnnnnnderful man, believe me!”

Wilma pursed her lips angrily. “I do believe you when you tell me you believe he’s a wonderful man. But then, you’re not being asked to risk the lives of our few surviving warriors on sneaky subterfuge.”

“He’s only one man,” Dr. Huer put in conciliatorily. “What could he possibly do to endanger our people?”

“He could attempt to discredit the treaty with Draconia!” Wilma snapped.

“But he has made no such attempt,” Theopolis said. “He comes to us a very bewildered young man. Devastated by the loss of every loved one. To him, there is nothing left to save. He has already lost all.”

“I would like an opportunity to spend some time with the captain,” Wilma Deering said.

“If you’re hoping to find fault with his testimony, you’ll be wasting your time.”

“Saving earth cannot be a waste of time, despite my having to endure the captain’s company!”

“If Dr. Theopolis has no objections,” Huer said, “
I
certainly have none.”

“Then the captain belongs to me,” Wilma asserted triumphantly, “until I expose him!” She rose from her seat and left the room, trailing a military sense of order.

The box on the desk said, “I’ve not seen Colonel Deering so uncharacteristically emotional about
anything
before this.”

“About anything?” Huer echoed his mechanical colleague. “Or about
anyone
?”

On a downtown mall of the Inner City, golden elevators whisked silently up and down in transparent columns surrounding a central fountain of waters illuminated by dancing, colorful lights. Buildings and vehicles gleamed in a bright, pleasant light. Smartly dressed and happy citizens moved from place to place, stopping for a bit of refreshment, shopping, appreciating works of art that were carefully spaced around the plaza, or conducting any other business that they happened to have.

Far across the mall, dwarfed by the towering spire of levels of magnificent architecture, two figures strolled slowly, side by side.

The man gazed around himself, obviously awestruck by the magnificence of his amazing surroundings.

The woman, accustomed to the mall and everything in it, kept her attention for the man at her side.

“This part doesn’t seem so much a nightmare as a beautiful dream,” Buck Rogers commented happily.

“It’s taken a long time to rebuild,” Wilma Deering responded. “We’ve reached the point where we can once again start to grow. For more than four hundred years after the worldwide holocaust, people did little more than eke out their bare survival!”

“Tell me what happened,” Buck almost pleaded. He was half-fearful to hear the horrors that he knew must be coming, yet he could not continue to live in this new world without finding out what had happened to the old one!

“I can’t tell you,” Wilma answered. “It isn’t so much that I’m unwilling to tell you, it’s the Council’s decision.
They
will tell you, when they feel that the time has come to do so.”

“I’ve been hearing that ever since I got here,” Buck said angrily.

“Why is it so important?” Wilma demanded. “Why must you hear that story? The end of your world was so—ugly!”

Buck paused and reached for Wilma’s hands. She let him take them. They stood facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes. “I need to hear because until I do, until I hear it and feel it, it isn’t real,” Buck explained. “Look, I’ve lost everything I ever cared about. My father, mother, brothers and sisters. And—a woman who had sensitivities and feelings that make all you people seem like robots.

“You’re sanitized, ethicized, scrubbed, polished, and packaged so completely that you don’t realize you’re acting like a pack of Pavlov’s hounds. Your Computer Council rings the bell and everybody salivates, nice and neat and on command.

“But somewhere, somehow . . .” He stood gazing off, not into the gleaming vista of Inner City’s plaza, but into the invisible mists of his lost past. “Someplace else in time and space, my own people, the real people, the real people are waiting for me. And until somebody shows me different, they’re going to remain more real to me than anything I’ve seen in this monument of plastic, or anyone I’ve met since I happened to doze off one afternoon in
Anno Domini
one-nine-eight-seven.”