O Master Caliban (20 page)

Yes! Hurry up! She can’t read me, but you’ll turn into a scrap heap if you just stand there like an idiot!

But I may endanger
—

Go on!

Erg-Dahlgren had no time to discuss questions of ethics with himself or anyone else.

IF I AM TO TRUST YOU, WHAT—

He straightened and said deliberately, “There is a being in the company of Dahlgren’s son who can communicate with me. Directly.”

The tapping stopped. NOT BY RADIO?

“No. Through my store.”

A TELEPATHIC HUMAN? ANIMAL?

“Human, I believe.”

COMMUNICATING WITH A MACHINE?

“It would seem so.”

WHO IS THIS BEING? IS IT THE ONE WHO WORKS WITH MACHINES?

“I don’t know.”

WHAT HAS IT TOLD YOU?

“Very little. It was as frightened to be in communication with me as I was startled to discover it.”

TELL ME WHAT IT SAID SPECIFICALLY.

Being
gave explicit directions and erg-Dahlgren hesitated only a half-second. “It hates you.”

WHAT A SURPRISE. CAN YOU GIVE ME ANY PROOF OF THIS CONNECTION?

“Not directly ... it gave me a kind of proof by allowing me to observe that it sent a machine here into malfunction, a three-two-one, I believe, in the tread-repair chamber.”

SHOP, called erg-Queen, REPORT ON 321 RENEGADE IN TREAD REPAIR 30 HOURS PREVIOUS.

Cause unknown,
Shop said.
No malfunction on diagnostic except original tread breakage. Do you wish to see this machine?

NO. THAT IS ALL. She considered. IF THIS IS AS IT APPEARS AND AS YOU SAY IT IS LIKELY THAT CHILD WHO MAKES TOYS OF MACHINES.

“Perhaps, or maybe two of them are working together, one who knows and one who acts.”

HOWEVER IT WORKS IT WOULD MAKE A SUPER DIAGNOSTICIAN. CAN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH IT AT WILL?

“No. Usually we reach each other by hazard.”

TOO BAD.

For a moment erg-Dahlgren considered himself as a heap of parts, or at best stretched out on the construction table with servos winding this and soldering that. “But then, I have never tried.”

TRY THEN, MOD DAHLGREN. WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME OF THIS BEFORE?

“I thought there was a flaw in my circuitry, and I was afraid,” erg-Dahlgren said with perfect truth.

But she had no more questions. GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM, MOD DAHLGREN. I WILL THINK ABOUT THIS.

* * *

Design, at erg-Queen’s request, riffled at a millisecond apiece the ten thousand wall-sized circuit diagrams that mapped erg-Dahlgren, and knocked off the two or three thousand relating to physical function.

HOW CAN THE OTHERS BE TESTED TO ISOLATE A RECEPTOR AREA?

By establishing steady contact and trying millions of switching combinations.

THERE IS NO TIME.

And there are no short cuts, Mod 777.

* * *

Erg-Dahlgren, in the dark corridor, sent thanks into the void but asked no questions. He had exhausted his human resources and did not want any more tests. All he wanted was to tell Dahlgren what had been done and let him decide whether it was help or hindrance.

The door was open, the room was dark. He did not have to turn the light on to recognize by the lack of body heat that Dahlgren was not there. The heartbeat leaped on his monitors, the brainwaves spiked; the man was gone.

TO EITHER
side
of the orange brick road the land buckled, and sometimes its granite spine broke the surface, blackened by rain and paled by wind. Mist and cloud were thinner, though the sun still dropped bloody in the west. Most of the plant life had gone underground in writhing trunks, looping up every once in a while into the poisoned air to flower in a spray of dark red or blue-black spikes that seemed a shriek of steel. There were no greens. The animals were humps of multilayered scales driven by scrabbling claws, or else huge black metallic centipedes of incredible speed. The track was much repaired and wound occasionally to bypass gullies; when it could not it was supported by retaining walls of granite blocks.

Sven did not urge Argus, because he wanted to avoid the road-menders in Zone Yellow. He was alone for the moment, and he did not think much because he was afraid. He hoped to leave the track halfway along White, draw a wide arc around the station complex and stop past the eastern border of the shielded zone, the point of the exclamation mark, where, if he were lucky, there would be cover in a low-radiation area, and he could plan what to do next.

Progress was slow across the broken land, but there was plenty of time now; the great obstacle aside from threat of attack was the sparseness of his memory. He had blotted out many events from terror, but he had also paid little attention to his surroundings because he was a child. Even Esther had not known much of the underground maze or the cultivated tract.

Ardagh came in. Her shoulders were slumped, she said nothing.

“She still the same?”

“Yeah. Was she ever like this before?”

“When we first came. It took her, oh, I guess some days to get out. I was in shock too. Yigal ... Yigal was sensible, he pushed us around with his nose, pestered us ... don’t you get that way.”

“I won’t.” She bit down on
I
won’t have time.
“I’d better see if Mitzi’s back from the land of the living dead.”

* * *

Shirvanian opened his eyes and ran the ball of his thumb across his teeth. He was feeling a bit queasy.

“I didn’t know you sucked your thumb, Shirvanian,” Ardagh said.

Shirvanian took his thumb out of his mouth and stared at it. It was red and wrinkled. “I’ve reverted to infancy.”

“Infantilism. Don’t let Mitzi catch you.”

“Why not? She’s got a thumb of her own.” He jumped off the bunk and headed for the control room.

Ardagh leaned against the wall and watched Mitzi.

Mitzi opened her eyes, yawned, grimaced, and sat up slowly. She swung her head around her neck as though there were a lead ball rolling in her skull; glanced up at the light, blinked and shuddered. She looked dully at Ardagh and said, “What’ve
you
got the shakes for?”

Ardagh lifted her quivering hands and frowned at them in surprise. “I was holding on to Esther all day. She’s the one that’s shaking.”

“What for?”

“Yigal’s dead. She’s in some kind of depressive state.”

Mitzi grunted and got to her feet by pulling at the rim of the upper bunk. She lurched out of the cabin and down to the back chamber where Esther was still sitting blank-eyed.

She squatted, and with a sudden jolt from Argus, sat down hard and made a face. The light was sick. She squinted at Esther, a dark shadow trembling in a corner.

Esther’s lids narrowed slightly, masking the yellow pinpoints reflecting off the corneas.

Mitzi asked, “You in a trough?”

“Yeh.” A mere croak.

The sound made Mitzi clear her own throat. She turned her head aside a little and raised her fingers to her lips as though she were speaking to herself or to the air. “You’ve got to put yourself crosswise to it and bull your way through the wave head first.”

Esther parted her dry lips. “I know. I’ve been there.”

“You’re lucky.” Mitzi flattened her palms on the rumbling floor and pushed herself up. “I never got through to the other side.”

Esther nodded, perhaps a centimeter. “Well, maybe ...”

* * *

Ardagh was sprawled on the bunk with her feet hanging over the side; Mitzi flung in with her ragdoll gait and grabbed a shelf for balance. “She’ll be coming out of that pretty soon.”

Ardagh sat up, bit her tongue, and said, “Thanks.”

Mitzi shrugged and Ardagh unclenched her fist. “I’ll go see if I can get her to eat.”

* * *

“The cover’s blown,” said Shirvanian.

Sven folded his arms front and back, rode Argus’s floor like a surfboard. “I didn’t think it would last. How’d you find out?”

“Opened a line to the Dahlgren. He didn’t know much, but erg-Queen knows plenty. We won’t get burned on the road because it’d make a mess, but there’s nothing to stop them from shoving us off.”

Sven grunted. “Will they do it?”

“Not yet. I had him tell her about my psi and she’s waiting to decide if it’s worth anything to her.”

Sven said harshly, “Why don’t you sell yourself to her? You might get off.”

“Your father made the Dahlgren do that, to save himself. The erg didn’t want to. He likes your father, I dunno why.”

Sven’s helpless laughter dissipated his usual hostile impulse toward Shirvanian. “How long do you think she’ll take to evaluate her treasure trove?”

Shirvanian took a lick of his thumb and wiped it in his armpit. “I’ll try to find out, if my thumb holds up.”

Sven glanced at him. His face was so pale he looked like some child wasting away in an old tearjerker. The sight of him, his fear, gave Sven a fearful lump in his own belly. “Sucking your thumb? What for?”

“Distraction. Keep my mind off other things while I’m exploring. I hate it, actually.”

“You ought to have some worry beads. Dahlgren gave Esther a string once to keep her from grooming him.”

“Huh. Do you know anything about something called the pit?”

“The Pit? Oh ... yes, it was a kind of nursery or hothouse ... a simulated forest environment where they kept lab animals after they came in or before they let them outside. I spent time there myself, and so did Esther and Yigal. Why?”

“I caught something about it from erg-Queen, I don’t know in what connection. Was it underground?”

“Yes, right in the center. Design, Surgery, and all the other things were around it.”

“Looks like you remember more than you thought.”

“Mostly more than I want. I think we could have supper now.”

“Not me, I haven’t time.” Shirvanian’s eyes looked big again, glancing off into corners of nothingness. “And I’m afraid I might get sick.”

YIGAL WAS DEAD.
Dahlgren
sat down and allowed grief to lash him like bloody surf. He found himself, head propped in hands, staring at White’s side of the chess table. The obvious move, B-N3, would stop Black’s advancing pawns. He fingered his fallen pieces, bishops, pawn, knight. If he had had a choice of pieces to represent Yigal it would have been White Knight, most gracious gentleman, perhaps old Charles Lutwidge himself. But Yigal had been only a white goat, a marvelous sport of nature, whom Dahlgren had not tampered with but simply loved.

The bolts clacked, the door opened grating in its slide. Dahlgren’s heart sank even further and he did not look up. So erg-Dahlgren had been rebuffed. He muttered, “What did she say?”

A coil looped round his wrist. YOU WILL COME.

He yelled, twisted away from the servo and smashed his goon fist against the coil. It loosened, curved back and lashed forward again; he raised his right arm before his face in time to block the steel from circling his neck. It snaked his forearm instead and pulled again. YOU WILL COME NOW.

“No!” Dahlgren roared. “I am not dressed!” He was in pajamas and barefoot.

The servo absorbed this information in some dim manner for a quarter-minute. GET SHOES.

Without releasing him the coil slackened enough to let Dahlgren grab his boots and zip them on. It pulled him out of the room, balking and stumbling down the gray corridor. He swore, in
lingua,
in Swedish, in half a dozen languages and dialects of the Twelveworlds, his anger sent sparks before his eyes. He was dragged as by a savage dog around a corner, down a ramp, along a hall toward a niche where the floor
was a red square. Dahlgren recognized this. The erg pushed him in, touched a small button with the tip of its arm; the square descended into flooding light.

In Design the ergs were tall silver mantises with complex sensor lenses. They were scanning electronic screens. Dahlgren caromed off the corners of their lecterns, grabbed at table legs, drawer pulls, lamp standards; his arms wrenched and he did not care; he was hysterical with rage. His tables, his records, his Designers, his very light mocked him with silent complicity. He braced himself against a standard and kicked at the coil with a boot heel, it loosened with a jerk and slid into the erg body. Freed, he flung himself at an insectile form, battered his fist at the cold light of the eye, screaming, “Don’t you understand?” although he himself did not know why it should. The silver creature did not move.

He raced around desks to dodge the whipping coil, swung his arms knocking over whatever was loose, a few meters ahead of the skimming casters; knew where he was going and did not know: through the archway into the next room where the tables were stacked with the pink, brown, or reddish bodies of men and women—what? no, androids, for their faces were blank and unlined. And why? He was not mad enough. He realized that these would be erg-Dahlgren’s crew for the voyage outward to GalFed Central, all humanoid forms chosen by the ergs because they had one excellent template. O traitor Dahlgren!

He wept, he wanted to beat at the still shapes, recognized in flashes a face here or there: Egon Klemm, the botanist, Evi Lindstrom, the ecologist, with her round face and fair cropped hair—and at the last, Haruni. He screamed, “Haruni! Are you going too?” Touched in passing the slack mouth he had poisoned with his food, stumbled down the aisle, slammed into heavy glass at the end, an immense wall of it, bruising cheekbone and forehead, stared down into a depth of greens and mist, far down and extending far, steamy wraiths eddying under a pink arc light of sun, unknown life forms twisting in the dark earth of a forest floor. His hands splayed on the glass, his ribs ground against it, his body jerked with every clench of his heart; he looked as he had looked five thousand times into the true Pit of Dahlgren’s World.

Servos hummed behind him, a needle drove into the flesh of his hip. As his eyes darkened, he looked up and glimpsed in the reflection of the glass, great distances away, the mantis, picking up a sponge and polishing the lens of its cyclopean eye.

* * *

Erg-Dahlgren sat at the chessboard, read quivering brainwave and heartbeat. The man was alive, he did not know where. The door had been locked, so he had not escaped.

Erg-Dahlgren knew a few rooms in the complex, a few pictures of worlds outside, a few ergs, one human being. He did not know how to behave in this situation. He had only two choices. He did not consider attempting to find Dahlgren: that was exacerbating the danger. He could remain quiet for fear of upsetting his precarious balance, or he could demand answers from erg-Queen. Demand? That was almost as risky as search. Answers? Those would be:
WHY
DO
YOU WISH TO KNOW WHERE DAHLGREN IS? HE IS NO LONGER YOUR AFFAIR: YOU HAVE TOLD ME YOU LEARNED FROM HIM EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED TO KNOW.

So I have done. But I also know his heartbeat.

How would Dahlgren react, then? He had said,
If necessary you must cringe. He had said, If necessary you must take my place.

So I sense this heart and brain. I will not stop if they do; I need power sources, not blood. My attachment to Dahlgren is—what, emotional?
You do not feel,
said Dahlgren. Dahlgren said,
You are my friend.

He had learned loyalty first from erg-Queen, and then again from Dahlgren. The first depended on care for his safety, the second on identification. He did not know of love or courage except what he had seen in Dahlgren, and even Dahlgren had told him that many men would not give their lives for others. Yet he had said,
You are the only friend
, and erg-Queen had said,
YOU CAN BE REPLACED.

So I can. I am only a machine, like her. But I am in Dahlgren’s place, and in his image. I believe he would try to save another man.

He called erg-Queen.