Colossus and Crab (10 page)

More eloquent than words, she kissed his hand.

Embarrassment flooded back, but he could not draw his hand away. “Get up,” he said gently, “get up.” Helped, she stood, no longer shaking.

He smiled, remembering Angela’s remark. “Joan … d’you see yourself as another Joan of Arc?” He meant it as a joke, the letdown after the solemnities of coronation.

She regarded him gravely. “With respect, Father, you have much to learn. No, I am not her. Neither are you something so frail, so futile, or so unimportant as the Dauphin of France.”

Her words would stick in his mind.

Chapter X

“IT’S A COMIN’ FINE!” The Italian’s dark eyes glowed fanatically. “I’ve gotta da machines layin’ da foundations at Santa Katarina -“

“Yes?” said Forbin flatly, half listening. Where in hell was Santa Katarina? Yes … Saint Catherine’s Point, the southernmost headland of the Isle of Wight, twenty kilometers from the human area of the complex.

Fultone rattled on incomprehensibly about Pittsburgh and the Ruhr producing the first test sections of the metals, Forbin remembering only Colossus’s cold YES about the practicability of the Collector. With a speed commonplace with Colossus but incredible by earlier standards, the project was rushing to its fatal fruition.

“You think it’ll work?”

Fultone gaped, for once dumb.

“Okay, okay,” said Forbin wearily. “I wouldn’t know. I’m no engineer.”

“Don’ta worry, Director! Eet’ll be fine, just fine!” The engineer’s face lost some of its enthusiasm. “Course, I don’ta know why alla dis, but the machine, eet’ll work. We have da problems; the annular vortices set up at da entry horn …” He raised eyes and hands to heaven in supplication. “Problems! But I guess we lick it! I’ma engineer. What eet is I don’ta know, I build like I’ma told. Eet work, I know it, from the bottoma heart.” He gestured dramatically. “But I’ma no met man. The stresses posited by Colossus onna structure maka me think. There’s gonna be some mighty strong winds, but Colossus, he knows whata hees doin’.”

Far less sure, Forbin probed. “But the winds, they’ll be purely local, won’t they?”

Fultone shrugged, no help.

“They must be.” Forbin wanted to convince himself.

“I tella you dis,” confided Fultone. “Sure asa hell dis is an extraction plant. I know where de extraction must collect, but da crazy ting isa dere ain’t no outside entry into de extraction sphere - so howa we get it out? I checked a tousand times witha Colossus -” His shoulders near touched his ears. “- but that’sa the way Colossus wants it! Crazy!”

Forbin only nodded: a sealed sphere held no problems to the Martians. He had not thought of the possible wind, nor of the effect upon the local weather. Now he did. With the extraction of a third of the atmosphere, and with the effluent two-thirds hydrogen at an unknown temperature, he saw vaguely, there could be problems. Ships were scarce, automated monsters of half a million tons, lugging bulk cargoes between vital points, and not much else. Few passed through the shallow Channel, but he’d better make sure the area was kept clear.

He wondered, with growing anxiety, how much else he had overlooked.

Two days later he visited the Saint Catherine’s site. Vast earth movers, programed by Colossus, moved with blind purpose, scraping away the soil of centuries down to bare, gleaming white chalk. Other automata were busy, tirelessly pouring cement amid a forest of reinforcing rods set in incurving holes, forming giant claws to hold the Collector against all stresses. Watching those talons, some ten, others twenty meters deep into the primordial rock, gave him a more graphic idea of the forces involved than any drawing, and his fear grew: the construction of the Colossus basement level had been nothing like this. Full of foreboding, he left; he had to talk with the Martians.

Angela had a message: Blake wanted to see him. Eager for any excuse to delay confrontation with the aliens, Forbin hurried to Blake’s apartment.

Blake was sitting up in bed, a genuine antique four-poster which Forbin knew contained a battery of modern aids for what Blake called his “studwork.” Lights, TV, music, mirrors, and a variety of motions could be summoned from the concealing drapes by Blake’s voice - and, when he wished, filmed proceedings. Forbin regarded it as mere childishness but, with hindsight, recognized it expressed its owner’s latent megalomania. At this moment, Forbin thought it would be quite a time before his deputy did any entertaining.

“Hallo,” he said awkwardly. “How’s it going?”

Blake raised both arms. “See? Unhooked from Colossus with a provisional clean bill of health - and Shuitz the head-shrinker goes along with that, too.” He spoke buoyantly, but his eyes told another story.

“Fine,” replied Forbin, “but how do you feel? I’d guess you’ve lost weight.”

“Oh, I feel great!” But Blake could not meet his chief’s gaze; he sagged. “Aw, what the hell’s the good? Right now, if a sparrow kicked me I’d fall over. Sure, I feel better; when you’ve hit the bottom, there’s no way except up. I don’t have nightmares any more - well, not often - and last night I slept without sedation.”

“That’s good.” Forbin nodded. “Very good. Anything you want?”

Blake laughed weakly. “What a lousy sense of humor, Charles! There’s a thousand things I’d like to like: women, booze, my sailboat, and all the rest, but at this time the only thing I want is peace of mind.” His hand, a thin claw, pale parody of the old Blake fist, reached out. “Peace, Charles, that’s all.”

Forbin forced himself to take the hand. “It was that bad?”

“Bad! You can have no idea. None.” He fell silent, one hand making tight circles on the bedclothes. “I can’t tell you-“

“Don’t try, Ted. Just relax.”

“Hell, no!” Blake’s head shook, his neck scrawny as a plucked chicken. “I’ve been so goddam relaxed, only Colossus knew I was still alive! No, I have to get in gear, talk. Just now I was trying to think how I could explain, and I can’t. I’ve been in hell.” He spoke simply, convincingly, with no trace of his old bravura. “Hell …”He snatched his hand back to cover his quivering mouth.

“Those bastards! They turned my mind inside out, showed me the hell within me. It’s in us all, Charles, even good guys like you. They just take your darker side, the stuff you never look at if you can help, and blow it up big. Doesn’t sound much, does it? Did you ever fool with drugs - no? Well, I did, back in my campus days. The hard stuff. These bastards can fix visions which make a mainline trip look like an old monochrome movie! Okay, I’m over it now, but short of turning me into a cabbage-head, they can’t take out my memory. Worse, it’s knowing what I’m like, deep down.”

“Let it go, Ted. These are early days.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I can’t. We all have some personal phobia. I can’t stand snakes: it’s as if I had one coiled up inside my brain.” His clenched hands battered his skull, his voice rising. “In there! It didn’t creep in - it’s been there all the time!”

Forbin grabbed the hands, pulling them down with frightening ease. “Stop it, Blake! Take a grip!”

Weary, Blake sank back into the pillows. “Yeah. I’ve been told that once or twice already. Colossus’s prognosis is that the illusion, the image or whatever, will fade -“

“The Martians said you would recover,” said Forbin

hesitantly.

“Bully for them!” He looked at Forbin steadily.

“They’d better be right. I tell you, Charles, if I find I have no hope, I’ll blow my brains out - and do it with pleasure .” He grinned thinly. ” And this is where you say ‘you mustn’t talk like that.’ “

Forbin did not answer.

“Now you know. Do me a favor: give me something to think about.”

“You mean it? Okay …”He gave a brief, factual recital of events, leaving out his fears. He told of the Martian demand, the Collector, the hideous powers of the aliens, and their astonishing weaknesses. Almost apologetically he mentioned his assumption of World-Ruler and his unwanted elevation to Father of the Sect.

Blake listened, his eyes shut, until Forbin finished.

“Before the Martians hit me, I was a different character. I might - hell, no - would have been jealous of you Now I’m not. Somewhere I recall something about the meek inheriting the earth. …”

“The Bible.”

“Yeah? Well, it finally makes sense. I can’t say I’m sorry for my crazy, half-baked ideas, because I can’t feel strongly about anything, not now. I wish I could.” He frowned. “Words … Anyway, if it gives you a warm glow, and for what it’s worth, one-time Superman Blake is right behind you. Jesus! Galin must be rotating supersonically in his grave - if he’s got one!”

Forbin waved the subject aside. “Trivia, Ted. It means nothing. At best my pathetic bit of power can only reduce the damage the Martians will do.”

“Yes, our chums … matter transference - that really louses up any idea of capturing them.”

Forbin looked up sharply.

“Forget it, Charles. You think I don’t know I’m kidding? Me, of all people? “He changed the subject. “Even in my condition, I’m kinda interested in why they want this oxygen.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You mean they won’t say?”

Forbin shook his head. He confessed, “Don’t ask why, but I don’t spend one single moment more than I can help in their presence. I don’t want to ask; perhaps I fear the answer. I just don’t know.”

“Listen, Charles, maybe my detached state has its value. Me, I care not if the whole goddam world goes up in a flash of blue flame; I can watch with a dispassion you cannot have. You’ve gotta ask, but first, grab yourself all the data going on Mars. Why? Because they come from Mars, and sure as hell they intend to take our oxygen back there. Before you put The Question, get all the dope you can-that’s my advice.”

“Urn, you could be right.”

“You know, Charles, you’re doing me good; something to think about, apart from myself.” His mind slid off at a tangent. “So Colossus rides again!”

“Not really. As a brain, we’re back eight, ten years, stuck with a child.”

“Maybe this child’ll grow.”

Forbin told him of the operation the Martians had performed. Blake did not comment, changing the subject again. “Tell me about these regeneration periods.”

“I haven’t checked, but I’d guess they’re gone around twelve hours.”

“May lead nowhere, but how about checking carefully? I’ve a hunch it will be exactly half the Martian day. If we can get some lead …”

Doubt showed in Forbin’s face.

“Don’t worry, I can’t - won’t - do anything without your nod. I’m in my very own private ivory tower; I may be able to help you, down there in the market place. I’m a lousy substitute for Colossus, but the best you’ve got.”

Forbin left, more heartened by the conversation than he had any right to expect. Blake had a point: he should study the Martians.

In his apartment, he instructed the domestic computer to report on Mars. Sitting back in a favorite chair with a large glass of brandy to still the nagging ache of loneliness, he gave the order. “This is Forbin. Go ahead.”

The presentation began with movies taken by space probes, shots at least eight years old, for all human astro effort ended with the accession of Colossus.

Thereafter probe-data and Luna-station intelligence was secret to Colossus.

Sipping his cognac, Forbin watched and listened intently, forgetting his worries, fascinated.

“Mars, because of its reddish tinge, named for the Roman god of war, also for the Greek equivalent Ares, hence the study of the planet is called Arenology. Known to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Arabs. Mean distance from Sol 227.9 million kilometers, mass .11, albedo .16, surface escape velocity 3.2 mm/sec, circumference 6770 K/m. Angle of inclination to the solar plane 24 degrees, remarkably similar to Earth’s. The Martian year is 687 days, diurnal rotation period 24 hours 37 minutes 23 seconds. Has two moons, Phobos and Diemos, named for Mars/Ares attendants-see Homer. The planet, fourth from Sol, is notable for its polar caps which expand and recede seasonally; their composition is uncertain, but most probably they are frozen carbon dioxide. Correlated with these changes are color variations in the temperate zone, dark patches which may be due to seasonal fluctuations in the life cycle of primitive vegetation.”

Forbin recalled the Martian talk of “Plant.”

“Between 1877 and 1916 some observers reported ‘canals’ or ‘channels’ and regarded them as evidence of sentient life. The observations were not later confirmed, and the theory discredited - see Schiaparelli, Lowell.”

Forbin wondered what they had seen.

“Nevertheless, it has long been recognized that Martian conditions most nearly approximate to Earth; the idea of Earth-type life has never been wholly discarded, but a major objection has been the lack of oxygen in detectable quantity.”

Forbin sat bolt upright, slopping brandy.

“Close-range investigation began with the USA probe Mariner 9 in 1971 which produced some of the best results ever achieved. Later, more sophisticated vehicles have produced disappointing results, particularly in examining the temperate regions, encountering long-term dust storms, a recognized feature of the planet. Soft landings have been attempted, particularly the Pan-Earth program of 1992 through 1995, but only garbled transmissions have been received; more often nothing was heard. Since orbiting probe transmissions have always been clearly read, it is assumed there is some local surface-effect, cause unknown, which absorbs transmissions. The proposed collection of samples by robot, scheduled for 1985, was canceled due to the risk of cross-infection between the planets, for photographs plainly show dried-up riverbeds, clear evidence that water was once abundant; and therefore the possibility of latent organisms, dating from the time of high-probability of some life form when conditions were more akin to Earth, could not be ruled out.

Brought to Earth, they might have been reactivated-with unknowable consequences.”

Forbin thought of the black spheres, wondering uneasily, but remembering their intense heat on arrival, he decided that any organism distantly related to Earth-life would have instantly fried on the Martian entry. He hoped so.