Norton, Andre - Anthology (5 page)

 
          
 
He slowed slightly.

 
          
 
Freedom of Shape . . . that
was a strange notion.
A disturbing notion.

 
          
 
And obviously a device of The Shapeless One,
he told himself, and rushed on.

 
          
 
At the end of the corridor was a gigantic
bolted door.
Pid
stared at it.

 
          
 
Footsteps hammered down the corridor, and Men
were shouting.

 
          
 
What was wrong? How had they detected him?
Quickly he examined himself and ran his fingers across his face.

 
          
 
He had forgotten to mold any features.

           
 
In despair he pulled at the door. He took the
tiny Dis-placer out of his pouch, but the pulse beat wasn't quite strong
enough. He had to get closer to the reactor.

 
          
 
He studied the door. There was a tiny crack
running under it.
Pid
went quickly shapeless and
flowed under, barely squeezing the Displacer through.

 
          
 
Inside the room he found another bolt on the
inside of the door. He jammed it into place and looked around for something to
prop against the door.

 
          
 
It was a tiny room. On one side was a lead
door, leading toward the reactor. There was a small window on another side, and
that was all.

 
          
 
Pid
looked at the
Displacer. The pulse beat was right. At last he was close enough. Here the
Displacer could
work,
drawing and altering the energy
from the reactor. All he had to do was activate it.

 
          
 
But they had all
deserted,
every one of them.

 
          
 
Pid
hesitated. All
Glom are born Shapeless. That was true. Glom children were amorphous, until old
enough to be instructed in the caste-shape of their ancestors.
But Freedom of Shape?

 
          
 
Pid
considered the
possibilities. To be able to take on any shape he wanted, without interference!
On this paradise planet he could fulfill any ambition, become anything,
do
anything.

 
          
 
Nor would he be lonely. There were other Glom
here as well, enjoying the benefits of Freedom of Shape.

 
          
 
The Men were beginning to break down the door.
Pid
was still uncertain.

 
          
 
What should he do?
Freedom .
..

 
          
 
But not for him, he thought bitterly. It was
easy enough to be a Hunter or a Thinker. But he was a Pilot. Piloting was his
life and love. How could he do that here?

 
          
 
Of course, the Men had ships. He could turn
into a Man, find a ship . . .

 
          
 
Never.
Easy enough to become a-Tree or a Dog.
He could never pass
successfully as a
Man.

 
          
 
The Door was beginning to splinter from
repeated blows.

 
          
 
Pid
walked to the
window to take a last look at the planet before activating the Displacer.

 
          
 
He looked—and almost collapsed from shock.

 
          
 
It was really true! He hadn't fully understood
what Ger had meant when he said that there were species on this planet to
satisfy every need. Every need! Even his!

 
          
 
Here he could satisfy a longing of the Pilot
Caste that went even deeper than Piloting.

 
          
 
He looked again,
then
smashed the Displacer to the floor. The door burst open, and in the same
instant he flung himself through the window.

 
          
 
The Men raced to the window and stared out.
But they were unable to understand what they saw.

 
          
 
There was only a great white bird out there,
flapping awkwardly but with increasing strength, trying to overtake a flight of
birds in the distance.

            
Robots have been
presented by science-fiction writers as both helpful and harmful. Sometimes
they are mere machines, sometimes terrifyingly more. And at present when our
world, much to our suspicious resentment, seems to be turning to machines to
answer all problems of daily life, it is only too easy to visualize an eventual
conclusion of a world with man extinct and machines in charge. However, will
those in turn come to a final end? The author of Rust presents a picture of a
very far future, and it is a grim one, but it has its own strange sorrow.

The sun, rising over the hills,
cast long shadows across the patches of snow and bathed the crumbling ruins in
the pale light. Had men been there they could have reckoned the month to be
August. But men had gone, long since, and the run had waned; and now, in this
late period of the earth's age, the short spring was awakening.

Within the broken city, in a
mighty-columned hall that still supported a part of a roof, life of a sort was
stirring. Three grotesque creatures were moving, their limbs creaking
dolefully.

X-120 faced the new day and the new
spring with a feeling of exhilaration that nearly drove the age-old loneliness
and emptiness from the corroded metal of what might be called his brain. The
sun was the source of his energy, even as it had been the source of the fleshy
life before him; and with the sun's reappearance he felt new strength coursing
through the wires and coils and gears of his complex body.

He and his companions were highly
developed robots, the last ever to be made by the Earthmen. X-120 consisted of
a globe of metal, eight feet in diameter, mounted upon four many-jointed legs.
At the top of this globe was a protuberance like a kaiser's helmet which
caught and stored his power from the rays of the sun.

From the "face" of the
globe two ghostly quartz eyes bulged. The globe was divided by a heavy band of
metal at its middle, and from this band, at each side, extended a long arm
ending in a powerful claw. This claw was like the pincers of a lobster and had
been built to shear through metal. Four long cables, which served as auxiliary
arms, were drawn up like springs against the body.

X-120 stepped from the shadows of
the broken hall into the ruined street. The sun's rays striking against his
tarnished sides sent new strength coursing through his body. He had forgotten
how many springs he had seen. Many generations of twisted oaks that grew among
the ruins had sprung up and fallen since X-120 and his companions had been
made. Countless hundreds of springs had flitted across the dying earth since
the laughter and dreams and follies of men had ceased to disturb those
crumbling walls.

"The sunlight is warm,"
called X-120. "Come out, G-3a and L-1716. I feel young again."

His companions lumbered into the
sunlight. G-3a had lost one leg, and moved slowly and with difficulty. The
steel of his body was nearly covered with red rust, and the copper and aluminum
alloys that completed his makeup were pitted with deep stains of greenish
black. L-1716 was not so badly tarnished, but he had lost one arm; and the four
auxiliary cables were broken and dangled from his sides like trailing wires. Of
the three X-120 was the best preserved. He still had the use of all his limbs,
and here and there on his body shone the gleam of untarnished metal. His
masters had made him well.

The crippled G-3a looked about him
and whined like an old, old man. "It will surely rain," he shivered.
"I cannot stand another rain.

"Nonsense," said L-1716,
his broken arms, scraping along the ground as he moved, "there is not a
cloud in the sky. Already I feel better."

G-3a looked about him in fear.
"And are we all?" he questioned. "Last
winter
there were
twelve."

X-120 had been thinking of the
other nine, all that had been left of the countless
horde
that men had once fashioned. "The nine were to winter in the jade
tower," he explained. "We will go there. Perhaps they do not think it
is time to venture out."

"I cannot leave my work,"
grated G-3a. "There is so little time left. I have almost reached the
goal." His whirring voice was raised to a pitch of triumph. "Soon I
shall make living robots, even as men made us."

"The old story,"
sighed
L-1716. "How long have we been working to make
robots who will take our places? And what have we made?
Usually
nothing but lifeless blobs of steel.
Sometimes we have fashioned mad
things that had to be destroyed. But never in all the years have we made a
single robot that resembled ourselves."

X-120 stood in the broken street,
and the sunlight made a shimmering over his rust-dappled sides.

"That is where we have
failed," he mused as he looked at his clawlike arms. "We have tried
to make robots like ourselves. Men did not make us for life; they fashioned us
for death." He waved his huge lobster claw in the air. "What was this
made for? Was it made for the shaping of other robots? Was it made to fashion
anything? Blades like that were made for slaughter—nothing else."

"Even so," whined the
crippled robot, "I have nearly succeeded. With help I can win."

"And have we ever refused to
help?" snapped L-1716. "
You’re are
getting
old, G-3a. All winter you have worked in that little dark room, never allowing
us to enter."

There was a metallic cackle in
G-3a's voice. "But I have nearly won. They said I wouldn't, but I have
nearly won. I need help.
One more operation.
If it
succeeds, the robots may yet rebuild the world."

Reluctantly X-120 followed the two
back into the shadowed ruins. It was dark in there; but their round, glassy
eyes had been made for both day and night.

"See," squeaked old G-3a,
as he pointed to a metal skeleton upon the floor. "I have remade a robot
from parts that I took from the scrap heap. It is perfect, all but the brain.
Still, I believe this will work." He motioned to a gleaming object upon a
littered table. It was a huge copper sphere with two black squares of a tarlike
substance set into it. At the pole opposite from these squares was a protuberance
no larger than a man's fist.

"This," said G-3a
thoughtfully, "is the only perfect brain that I could find. You see, I am
not trying to create something; I am merely rebuilding. Those"—he nodded
to the black squares—"are the sensory organs. The visions from the eyes
are flashed upon these as though they were screens. Beyond those eyes is the
response mechanism, thousands and thousands of photoelectric cells. Men made it
so that it would react mechanically to certain images. Movement, the simple
avoidance of objects, the urge to kill, these are directed by the copper
sphere.

"Beyond this"—he gestured
to the bulge at the back of the brain—"is the thought mechanism. It is
what made us different from other machines."

"It is very small,"
mocked X-120.

"So it is," replied G-3a.
"I have heard that it was the reverse with the brains of men. But enough!
See, this must fit into the body—so. The black squares rest behind the eyes.
That wire brings energy to the brain, and those coils are connected to the
power unit which operates the arms and legs. That wire goes to the balancing
mechanism—" He droned on and on, explaining each part carefully. "And
now," he finished, "someone must connect it. I cannot."

L-1716 stared at his one rusty claw
with confusion. Then both he and G-3a were looking at X-120.

"I can only try," offered
the robot. "But remember what I said. We were not fashioned to make
anything; only to kill."

Clumsily he lifted the copper
sphere and its cluster of wires from the table. He worked slowly and carefully.
One by one the huge claws crimped the tiny wires together. The job was nearly
finished. Then the great pincers, hovering so care-fully above the last wire,
came into contact with another. There was a flash as the power short-circuited.
X-120 reeled back. The copper sphere melted and ran before their eyes.

X-120 huddled against the far wall.
"It is as I said," he moaned; "we can build nothing. We were not
made to work at anything. We were only made for one purpose, to kill." He
looked at his bulky claws, and shook them as though he might cast them away.

"Do not take on so,"
pacified old G-3a. "Perhaps it is just as well. We are things of steel,
and the world seems to be made for creatures of flesh and blood—little, puny
things that even I can crush. Still, that thing there"—he pointed to the
metal skeleton which now held the molten copper like a crucible—"was my
last hope. I have nothing else to offer.
^"

"Both of you have tried,"
agreed L-1716. "No one could blame either of you. Sometimes of nights when
I look into the stars, it seems that I see our doom written there; and I can
hear the worlds laughing at us. We have conquered the earth, but what of it? We
are going now, following the men who fashioned us.
^"

"Perhaps it is better."
nodded X-120. "I think it is the fault of our brains. You said that men
made us to react mechanically to certain stimuli. And though they gave us a
thought mechanism, it has no control over our reactions. I never wanted to
kill. Yet, I have killed many men-things. And sometimes, even as I killed, I
would be thinking of other things. I would not even know what had happened
until after the deed was done."

G-3a had not been listening.
Instead, he had been looking dolefully at the metal ruin upon the floor.
"There was one in the jade tower." he said abruptly, "who
thought he had nearly learned how to make a brain. He was to work all winter on
it. Perhaps he has succeeded."

"We will go there."
shrilled L-1716 laconically.

But even as they left the time-worn
hall G-3a looked back ruefully at the smoking wreckage upon the floor.

X-120 slowed his steps to match the
feeble gait of G-3a. Within sight of the tower he saw that they need go no farther.
At some time during the winter the old walls had buckled. The nine were buried
beneath tons and tons of masonry.

Slowly the three came back to their
broken hall. "I will not stay out any longer," grumbled G-3a. "I
am very old. I am very tired." He crept back into the shadows.

L-1716 stood looking after him.
"I am afraid that he is nearly done," he spoke sorrowfully. "The
rust must be within him now. He saved me once, long ago, when we destroyed this
city."

"Do you still think of
that?" asked X-120. "Sometimes it troubles me. Men were our
masters."

"And they made us as we
are," growled L-1716. "It was not our doing. We have talked of it
before, you know. We were machines, made to kill—"

"But we were made to kill the
little men in the yellow uniforms."

"Yes, I know. They made us on
a psychological principle: stimulus, response. We had only to see a man in a
yellow uniform and our next act was to kill. Then, after the Great War was
over, or even before it was over, the stimulus and response had overpowered us
all. It was only a short step from killing men in yellow uniforms to killing
all men."

"I know," said X-120
wearily. "When there were more of us I heard it explained often. But
sometimes it troubles me."

"It is all done now. Ages ago
it was done. You are different, X-120. I have felt for long that there is something
different about you. You were one of the last that they made. Still, you were
here when we took this city. You fought well, killing many."

X-120 sighed. "There were
small men-things then. They seemed so soft and harmless. Did we do right?"

"Nonsense.
We could not help it. We were made so. Men learned to make more than they could
control. Why, if I saw a man today, crippled as I am, I would kill him without
thinking."

"L-1716," whispered
X-120, "do you think there are any men left in the world?"

"I don't think so. Remember,
the Great War was general, not local. We were carried to all parts of the
earth, even to the smallest islands. The robots' rebellion came everywhere at
almost the same time. There were some of us who were equipped with radios. Those
died first, long ago, but they talked with nearly every part of the
world." Suddenly he wearied of speech. "But why worry now. It is
spring. Men made us for killing men. That was their crime. Can we help it if
they made us too well?"

"Yes," agreed X-120,
"it is spring. We will forget. Let us go toward the river. It was always
peaceful and beautiful there."

L-1716 was puzzled. "What
peace and beauty?" he asked.
"They are but words that men
taught us. I have never known them. But perhaps you have. You were always
different.
^"

"I do not know what peace and
beauty are, but when I think of them I am reminded of the river and of—"
X-120 stopped suddenly, careful that he might not give away a secret he had
kept so long.

"Very well," agreed
L-1716, "we will go to the river. I know a meadow there where the sun
always seemed warmer."

The two machines, each over twelve
feet high, lumbered down the almost obliterated street. As they pushed their
way over the debris and undergrowth that had settled about the ruins, they came
upon many rusted skeletons of things that had once been like themselves. And
toward the outskirts of the city they crossed over an immense scrap heap where
thousands of the shattered and rusted bodies lay.

^"
We used to bring
them here after—
^"
said L-1716. "But the last centuries we
have left them where they have fallen. I have been envying those who wintered
in the jade tower." His metallic voice hinted of sadness.

They came at last to an open space
in the trees. Farther they went and stood at the edge of a bluff overlooking a
gorge and a swirling river below. Several bridges had once been there but only
traces remained.

"I think I will go down to the
river's edge," offered X-120.

"Go ahead. I will stay here.
The way is too steep for me.
^"

So X-120 clambered down a
half-obliterated roadway alone. He stood at last by the rushing waters. Here,
he thought, was something that changed the least. Here was the only hint of
permanence in
all the
world. But even it changed. Soon
the melting snow would be gone and the waters would dwindle to a mere trickle.
He turned about and looked at the steep side of the gorge. Except for the
single place where the old roadbed crept down, the sides rose sheer, their
crests framed against the blue sky. These cliffs, too, were lasting.