O Master Caliban (5 page)

The thing, now wet silver, came closer, a machine in the shape of a bird; a bird that if it had been living matter would never have pierced the shell. One leg was much shorter than the other; it lurched. One wing was twitching weakly on the middle of its back; it had jewel eyes, and its beak clicked and chirped. An extra head lay still beside the other on a twisted neck. Well within the range of the transmitter, it still came forward, lurching and chirping.
Bottled thing in
a cheap circus.
Sven gagged.

* * *

“It’s harmless.” Shirvanian, box in hand, sat down beside it, picked up the grotesque thing and hugged it. The bird clacked, twitched, chirped in his arms.

Esther found her voice and croaked, “That’s dangerous!”

“No it isn’t,” said Shirvanian calmly. He hooked a fingernail under one scale, the bird gave a last twitch and collapsed. He rubbed down its scales with his sleeve.

“Then what is it?” Ardagh whispered. “A warning?”

“Maybe.” A warning of something cruel and ugly.

Mitzi said through her teeth, “Get it away!”

“Don’t be silly, it can’t hurt you.”

“If you’ve turned off the transmitter again I’ll
wring your neck,” said Esther.

“Those ergs’d be dumb if they couldn’t make a machine bypass that old transmitter,” Shirvanian said. He picked the thing up and smelled it, put it to his ear, touched it with his tongue. The bird looked heavy; evidently his hands were strong. “You know, you people haven’t asked me anything yet, and I’m the one who’s going to be doing most of the work.”

Koz growled, “What work did you have in mind?”

“Catching ergs. I said I’d make them work for me.”

Mitzi said, “God, I wish we’d shoved him out the lock.”

The child shrugged and smirked. People talked that way when he was around. “We’ve got an erg already, haven’t we?” He held the metal bird by its two necks and stared into the jewel eyes, then set it down again and reached for his box.

“What the devil have you got in there?”

Shirvanian grinned. “Toys.” He unhooked and split it. Its halves were packed to the millimeter with miniature screwdrivers, set-screws, wire spools, transistor chips, coils of solder, irons, power cells, rivets, lenses of varying range, and other things to delight the heart of a child.

Esther said, “Sven, this thing was sent to tell us we’re not safe any more.”

“Yes.” Sven unfolded his arms and conquered his revulsion enough to come closer. “What does it expect us to do?”

“Get scared, run away into the wilds, die.”

“They could have done that lots of other ways.”

“Maybe there’s something that likes to play complicated games ...” Esther poked the bird. “What are you going to do, Shirvanian?”

“Fix it,” he said. “My way.”

“Better bring it inside, the rain’ll get at it.” She barked with laughter. “And if any of those toys of yours fall into the cabbages they’ll give Yigal a bellyache.”

DAHLGREN LAY
on
the bed in his faded hospital blues.

It begins to clear. When it is time to report to the Sciences Council they will send erg-Dahlgren. They are clever. Not too clever for their own good, like me. He/it will not be so different from myself, what they know of me out there, little god, they say, Dahlgren-with-a-world-of-his-own. I have changed, I suppose, and what of that, one time I whined and begged? They understand only words and reasons, ergs, and when it is to their own advantage. Like me. As I was. And how different now? And who to see?
I
can’t live with you any more, I
can’t.
I
know you’re not cruel, you love me, you have feelings, you’re kind in some aching offhand way that won’t show to anybody, but the inside of you isn’t worth that awful thickness of the surface, and it’s freezing me to the marrow. Thank God we didn’t have any children together, and I’m still young enough to have them ... you have nothing to say. Of course not. Something tied a knot in you, I don’t know what, but Edvard, dear, I can’t untie it ...

Well, I am unraveled enough now, my sweet.

* * *

Ergs brought him to the room where erg-Dahlgren had been formed. Other-Dahlgren lay still on a table, fleshed completely now, pink and unmarked as a child. The ergs lowered over him a fine grid set in lucite. They took away Dahlgren’s pajamas and set him on a table beside the other, with a similar grid. As it lowered they injected him. Before he sank down into the black he had one weird thought, a wisp from old stories of Gothic horror: brain exchange. He had time for a twinge of amusement: they would never trust an animal, brain or body.

* * *

When he woke the grid was rising. Erg-Dahlgren was sitting on the other table, hands gripping the edge, legs crossed at the ankle, swinging. He grinned. He had lost his newness; his skin was yellowed, specked with age spots, lined. The ergs had mapped him: he had Dahlgren’s every mole, hair and blue vein.

Dahlgren sat up slowly and faced him unconsciously in the same position.

“You have guessed?” said the erg. “I am ready to take your place ... if there are women, there is nothing they would not have seen on you, even if they were to remember after so many years.”

“I was never very good with women,” Dahlgren said dryly. “That would not be a great problem.”

“So much the better.”

“Why do you want my place?”

“To do what you would do. Make worlds. Create, destroy, and own, like all men. It is what makes us different from the animals.”

“Thank you for the lesson,” said Dahlgren.

“My philosophy, of course, has not the depth of yours.”

“I have no doubt you will improve on it,” Dahlgren said. “When may I expect to die?”

“Not yet! Not yet!” Erg-Dahlgren held up a hand with the arthritic knots of the original. “I look and move like you, but I do not yet think like you—”

“You are doing a very good imitation.”

“Thank you. But I must be perfect—a sentiment with which I believe you would agree. In order for me to do that we will play a game.”

“I thought we were doing that already.”

“You see, I did not know you had a sense of humor. That is very difficult for an erg to simulate.”

“It shouldn’t be,” said Dahlgren. “It’s a branch of the same tree that grows cruelty and the lust for power.”

“That is good. I will remember that.” He turned his head, and Dahlgren followed the look. He had not noticed the new erg rolling in on silent casters. It was not as big as the most powerful machines, but was still much taller than he. Vaguely female in shape, somewhat conical, rather insectiform; five arms lay curved down along each flank; a rank of faceted jewel eye buttons ran down the midline; its bulblike upper end wore a crown of antennas. Dull silver in blemishless perfection, segments tiered like peplums, it gave the impression of a pampered hive queen. Dahlgren thought his mind might be slanting off again; for a moment he had the idea that erg-Dahlgren was about to call it Mother.

YOU ARE READY TO PLAY. The voice was pure machine.

“We must dress first,” said erg-Dahlgren. “Always look the part. Our man does not know what game yet.”

DO YOU NOT, DAHLGREN? WHAT GAME DO YOU PLAY BUT CHESS?

“What game is more suitable for men and machines?” erg-Dahlgren asked. He pulled on a replica of Dahlgren’s coverall.

Dahlgren thought, they are one. No, he is her doll, her puppet. If I broke her doll she would mend him. But it had never occurred to him to attack an erg. He had chosen ergs for their superiority as carefully as he had chosen animals.

No longer naked in the presence of his enemy, he felt stronger, and said, “You cannot force me to play chess with you.”

“Why should we force you?” erg-Dahlgren said. “You will wish to play. I have learned the rules of your game; let me tell you mine. It does not matter who wins, because there will be no prizes. I have told you that I intend to learn how you think and act, because I am going to take your place on Earth and in the heavens. When I have learned, you will die, because you will no longer be needed. The longer you play, the longer you live. You have not much more than half a thirtyday because we must lift off by then. You should know that you have already been given a great gift of time because it took nine of your years for us to learn to make me.”

“You’ve done well,” said Dahlgren. “It took sixty-three to make me ... and four million to make Man.”

YOU MAY NO LONGER PLAY FOR TIME, DAHLGREN. YOU WILL PLAY CHESS FOR US.

“I have no set,” Dahlgren said.

YOU HAVE A SET. WE KEPT IT FOR YOU.

The wall behind the silver erg slid open. Beyond it was a brightly lit room with two chairs, a chess table Dahlgren recognized as his own—the one he had played on with Haruni—and a chessboard set with pieces.

Dahlgren slid off the examining table and looked at it. “That’s no kind of set to play with. I can’t use that.”

It was a showpiece, a gift his wife had had made for him in the days when she loved him. The squares of the board were ivory and bone, the pieces transparent lucite blocks, each enclosing an object: the white pawns preserved snail shells, the blacks cowries, the queens slender coral branches of red and white, the kings animal molars in different shadings with roots pointing upward like crowns, the bishops varieties of fossil trilobites, the rooks mammal phalanges, and the knights the skulls of small birds, beaks pointing upward. All earthly, all animal. Dahlgren, master of dead animals.

“That’s not a set anyone can play with.” He smiled ruefully. “I never was a master, I lost most of my games with Haruni, and I couldn’t even find my way through this. Where’s my old Staunton?”

Dahlgren’s copy picked up the white coral Queen, blinked at it, and set it down.

YOU GAVE IT TO YOUR SON, said erg-Queen.

True. Dahlgren thought of Sven, if he had survived, playing chess with Esther, their faces puckered earnestly, and Yigal, perhaps, sitting with his head resting on a bent hoof, kibitzing. Silliness. Why had he given him the set? “Yes, I remember.”

Erg-Dahlgren said, “If you cannot play with these we can have a set machined to your specifications.”

“No thank you,” said Dahlgren. “I don’t care to play with your pieces.”

THEN BEGIN.

“I will take white,” said erg-Dahlgren. “I don’t think you will mind my advantage, since I have just learned the game and you know it very well.”

“I haven’t played in a long time,” Dahlgren said, “but I seem to have no choice,” He sat down at Black and stared at the pieces bemusedly. Cowrie to Coral 4. Ah well, it was an interesting way to die.

Erg-Dahlgren took his place at White. There was a look on his face that was very human, and perhaps very much machine: the look of the young contender, the new invention, about to supersede the old. The young Morphy, Alekhine, Capablanca, Fischer, Piutto, Haruni, all must have looked so, for the first time, at one game.

The tall silver erg rolled silently behind him and backed against the wall, her five sets of arms lying downward along the curve of her body.

Erg-Dahlgren raised his right hand and quietly pushed Pawn, past bone and ivory, to King 4.

SVEN ASKED,
“When
is Dahlgren giving his report to the Council?”

“Thirty-one days Standard.” Ardagh drew down her brows. “That’s—I think—thirty-eight Solthree. I dunno about local time.”

“Twenty-eight or nine,” Sven said. “That’s why so many worlds agreed to work on this place, because its day was so close to Standard,”

“And here to GalFed Central takes how long?” Esther asked.

“Twelve to fifteen Standard,” said Joshua.

Esther scratched her chin. “Well, Sven, are we going?”

He began to shiver and tensed to control himself. “Yes. We’re not safe here.”

“Then we have about twelve days local to reach Headquarters.”

Koz jigged his heel on the floor. “What
are
we going to do?”

“Plan.” Sven was watching Shirvanian.

The boy, silent, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, metal bits and pieces spread out on the skin side of an old rabbit-fur quilt to keep them from falling between the bricks. His fat grubby hands were not graceful, but they slapped parts together perfectly on the true. At the moment the bird was lying disjointed as if a butcher had been at it.

“Has that got a receiver?” Sven asked.

“No, a transmitter ... I think I need a radio, I guess I’d better make one.” He reached for his box, and an odd look spread over his face.

Esther said, “Just a minute.” She quietly removed him from his work and led him to the outhouse.

When he was settled again Sven said, “Come outside. Esther, you know the layout.”

It was calm for the moment, the mist had retreated, the soil was drying out. Esther squatted on the hard patch of earth by the door, and they gathered around her in an arc except for Mitzi, who hunkered against the streaked wall, eyes closed and face turned to the orange sun, smoking and letting the ash fall where it would. “Talk,” she said. “Just a lot of talk.”

With a sharp stick Esther drew a large triangle, apex pointing eastward, base half the length of its perpendicular. “Open radiated tract,” she said. “You are here.” Northwestern tip of base, she placed a stone. Beyond the apex she drew a circle like a dot at the end of an exclamation point. “Crops for men and animals at ground level, shielded with walls and low-energy force-fields; underground, the labs. And here,” between the two areas she drew five dots, “the reactors. I think there were five. Dahlgren’s World.”

“How do you know so much?” Koz asked.

“Ha. Everybody knows how curious a monkey can be. Not everybody knows how smart ... look here.” She bisected the triangle from apex to base and bisected the halves, touched the three lines lightly. “These are brick roads, service alleys for the ergs. Remember they have jogs where they cut through the earthworks at the zone boundaries so the polluted air doesn’t rush right through. Now,” across the triangle, starting from apex, she drew meridians, north to south, “one: white; two: yellow; three: orange; four: red; five: blue; and last,” she touched the remaining sector that included the stone, “green, which you remember was originally non-rad. And I hope you’ve been taking your anti-rad.”

“What route are we taking?” Joshua asked.

“The brick road,” she touched the top line, “the one you crossed last night.”

“What?” Koz yelled. “You’re crazy! The ergs and the radiation—”

Esther said, “I don’t worry about ergs because I travel in trees, but the forest is too slow going for you. I’m not scared of radiation because I doubt I’ll be fertile much longer, or that I’ll ever meet a male gibbon I want to look in the face every day for the rest of my life. I’d go alone if I knew what was up ahead and how to handle it, but I’m not that strong or smart. The ergs that come out around here will avoid the transmitter; we’ll see what Shirvanian can do about the others. Topaze will come with us till it gets too
hot for him; when he turns back we’ll stop and think.”

Ardagh asked, “How did they distinguish the zones besides building earthworks?”

“By using different-colored bricks on the roads, as you can
see
from our floor.”

Shirvanian said from inside, as his hands turned and fitted almost of their own will, “Then you must have had men coming out on inspection in shielded vehicles, because the ergs wouldn’t need colors.”

“That’s the kind of thing I hope we’ll find,” Esther said.

“They’d have aircars too,” said Joshua. “Jungle grows in layers from ground to treetop, they’d want to observe that, and the colors would be survey markings.”

“Even they’d need shielding,” said Shirvanian.

“They had them, I’ve been in them,” Sven said. “The ergs cut them up long ago. Their aircars fly higher, and they don’t look like ours.”

Koz tossed a pebble at a butterfly. “Why the hell do we have to stay inside the triangle? There’s much less radiation outside, I bet.”

Esther said, “Swamps, sulfur pits, stinking lakes, sandstorms, places where colonists tried to settle and the second growth’s so thick a worm couldn’t crawl through ... and we may have to, yet.”

“Yah, do or die,” said Mitzi, slurring off.

“Oh, wake up and think!” Ardagh cried. “You’re so mad to get off here!”

“I don’t care any more,” said Mitzi.

“We’ll make great time dragging her,” Koz said.

“Time,” said Esther. “We need a timetable. Sven?”

Sven was watching Shirvanian: if Dahlgren sent that thing here then Dahlgren’s gone mad, and if we try to reach the ship it’s not only the ergs we’ll have to get past ...

“Sven ...” Esther wanted him to answer.

Do or die, says Mitzi. “If we have twelve days, with margin, we have to make fifteen kilometers a day. That leaves two to get ready.”

Shirvanian came to the door with the clawed feet in one hand, like a branch of metal thorns, and the malevolent red-eyed head in the other. “How many Solthree hours in your day?”

“Just under thirty. Why?”

“To see if
I
had enough time.” He clashed the pieces together gently.

“For what?”

“To fix this. I told you.” He added for the benefit of morons, “To make a proper bird of it.”

“And for what purpose?” Esther found equal patience when she chose.

Shirvanian sat on his heels and rested chin on fists so that the metal head stuck out of one ear and the legs out of the other. “Do you want to let the ergs know you’re not scared?”

“We’re scared,” said Ardagh.

“Yah. It was sent for a scare. I could just leave it smashed up ... only I like things fixed.”

“So?”

“Or I could have it running in circles with a signal to make the ergs chase it because they didn’t know what it was—”

“We might get in their way,” said Joshua.

“Or I could send it back. You see,” he tapped the pieces together again, in a peculiarly unpleasant sound, “it had a direction finder, to reach this point, and a life sensor that homes on Solthree body chemistry, to come to us. It hasn’t got a receiver that would pick up anything else here, but ... it works on an erg signal. Not the kind of erg we saw last night, and not a servo. Not an ordinary class, or a model of a class. I’ve been around a lot of ergs, not as big as these, but I know. This was sent here by one particular erg, something new and big, and,” his
eyes
narrowed in a passion that would have been lust in an adult, “it sure is an erg I’d like to see ...”

“I hope I’m not around when you do,” said Esther.

“Well ... if you’re not too scared I’ll send it back along that beam. It might give something or somebody an unpleasant surprise.”

They looked at space, all those strange children, and at Sven. Dahlgren’s inheritor. He said in a low voice, “Send it back. We won’t have many surprises for them.”

“Okay.” Shirvanian tossed his glittering giblets in the air, caught them, and went to work. “Twenty kph ought to be enough.”

“Is that thing going to fly?” Esther asked.

“No, but it sure will run fast.”

“When will you be done?”

“Around midnight.” Gathering a wreath of baleful looks, he amended, “If it disturbs you I’ll finish in the morning.”

At that moment Mitzi quietly heeled over sideways and slumped to the ground.

Ardagh jumped up and pulled at her. “Mitzi—”

Esther hopped to her side. “That stuff she smokes—”

“It wouldn’t do this.”

Koz opened his mouth; Joshua put a hand on his arm. “Don’t say it. We have to stop that.”

“I think she’s got a fever,” Ardagh said.

Esther put her forehead to Mitzi’s cheek. “Ayeh.” She pushed away collar and hair. “Bakri mold. First thing everybody gets here.” There was a coin-sized spot on Mitzi’s neck, an outer ring of white crust, red inside and centered with green. “You got antibiotics?”

“Yes.”

“Give her what you take for dysentery. Sven, you get the alcohol. I’ll boil a knife.”

Ardagh cried, “What are you going to do with a knife?”

“Slit her gizzard.” Esther laughed. “Scrape it off, girl, what did you think? It’s like impetigo, only it goes with fever and diarrhea.”

“Now when are we going to get out of here?” Koz said.

“In two days,” Sven said. “According to plan.”