Prostho Plus (16 page)

Miss Tarantula emitted a hiss reminiscent of a matron's sniff. "Robots never sleep anyway."

"We haven't eaten a thing, we were so eager for your Lordship to come."

"Robots don't eat, either," she pointed out.

The green robot turned about, lifted one metal foot, and delivered a clanging kick to the pedestal of the transcoder. There was a pained screech and a series of metallic burps. Then: "We have watched no television in two days."

"That's more like it," Miss Tarantula said, permitting herself to be mollified. "A robot who loses its appetite for television is becoming almost sentient, and that's a sure sign of distress. Better have the spools updated on that contraption before someone has a misunderstanding."

With a secretary like that, Dillingham realized, an administrator could hardly err. He was glad that the three of them carried University three-language transcoders for private dialogue. There was a subtle distinction in principle between the small transcoders and the large translators; he didn't understand the technical part, but knew that the 'coder differed from the 'lator as a motorcycle differed from a jet plane. But the 'coders were portable and self-contained and cheap, so remained in common use on backward planets. Insert the proper spools and hold an adequate conversation. Usually.

"What seems to be the difficulty?" Oyster inquired in an offshell manner. Dillingham was reminded of one of the die-turns of effective administration: Never ask a question of a client without first knowing most of the answer.

The little robot began volubly defining the problem. Dillingham's attention wandered, for Miss Tarantula's summary had been far more succinct. How, he wondered, did robots reproduce? Were there male and female mechanicals, and did they marry? Were there procreative taboos, metal pornography, broken iron hearts?

"Director," Miss Tarantula said on their private link-up.

Oyster angled his transcoder intake—he wore the device inside his huge shell—unobtrusively at her, not interrupting the green robot's narrative. Dillingham did likewise.

"There is a priority call from the University." She had a trans-star receiver somewhere on her complicated person. "A wildcat student demonstration has infiltrated your wing. They're raiding the files—"

Oyster's eye-stalks turned bright green. "Boiling oceans!" he swore.

The robot broke off. "Did you say "gritty oil", Director?" The vibration of its headpiece showed it was upset.

"Take over, Director!" Oyster snapped at Dillingham. "I'm summoning an emergency ship back. My files!" And he ran across the landing field towards the communications station as rapidly as his spindly legs would carry him. Miss Tarantula followed.

"Did he say "gritty oil"?" the green robot demanded insistently. There was a faint odour of burning insulation about it. "He may be a Very Important Sentient, but language like that—"

"Of course not," Dillingham said quickly. "He would never stoop to such uncouthness. It must be a scratch on the transcoder spool." But he suspected that the transcoder had correctly rendered the expletive. His own unit had not been programmed for gutter talk; otherwise his own ears might be burning. Oyster had certainly been furious.

"Oh," the robot said, disgruntled. "Well, as I was saying—er, you
are
going to solve the problem, even if he renigs?"

"Naturally." Dillingham hoped the quiver in his voice sounded like confidence. "The Director did not renig; he merely left the matter in my hands. The University always honours its commitments." But privately he preferred the robot's term. He should have known he'd find himself in over his ears without a facemask. Somehow it always happened that way. "I suppose I'd better see the patient now."

Frantically eager—who claimed robots had no emotions!—the official conducted him to the site of the excavations. They rode in an antique floater past high mounds of broken rock. There were plants in this world, but the few he saw had a metallic look. Hardly a place for a human being to reside, though the air was breathable and the temperature and gravity comfortable.

The vehicle stopped, settling to the ground with a flatulent sigh. "I dare go no further," the green robot said, and indeed his headpiece was rattling in a fear-feedback. "The Jann is in the next pit. Signal when you're finished, and I will pick you up again. If it's safe."

As Dillingham stepped down with his bag of equipment, the robot spun the cart around, goosed the motor, and floated swiftly back the way they had come—taking the transcoder and signal with it.

Stranded again! What kind of robot could it be, that even other robots feared so greatly? And if it were that dangerous, why hadn't they simply destroyed it? Oh—it was reputed to be invulnerable.

He walked to the pit and peered down.

A tremendous robot lay there, half buried in rubble. Judging from the proportion exposed, it had to be twelve feet long entire. Its armour was polished to a glass-like finish despite the centuries of weathering and abrasion. It was an awesome sight, and the mighty torso seemed to pulse with power. A cruel, thin keening smote his ears, and he knew it at once for the robotic note of pain. He had not learned much about robots, but he was sensitive to distress in anything, flesh, metal or other. Yes, this creature was alive—and suffering. That was all he really needed to know.

The head section was roughly cubical and two feet on a side. A drawer in the region that would have been the face of a man was partially out, half-full of sand, and within this something glowed. Robots did not ordinarily have mouths, but some models did have orifices for the intromission and processing of assorted substances. The gears that ground down hard samples could be considered as teeth.

Now that he was in the physical presence of the patient, the information in one of the University cram-courses began to come to the surface. He was, he realized, familiar with the basic procedures for repairing such equipment. But the specific type he found here was particularly awkward, and if he operated on it he risked making some serious mistake. This was a most sophisticated robot, and it had been listed as extinct.

But if its innards followed the principles of contemporary robots, its "teeth" might serve a double purpose: They would have an extremely hard exterior surface for manual crushing action, together with intricate internal circuitry for communications and processing of data. As with the Electrolytes. That meant that a malfunction in a tooth could distort far more than the mechanical operation of the mouth. A short-circuit could interfere with the functions of the brain itself...

Dillingham vacuumed out the sand and studied the configuration. One tooth glowed hotly. The pain-hum seemed to emanate from it. A quick check with his precise University instruments verified the short-circuit.

"All right, Jann—I believe I have diagnosed the condition," he said, speaking rhetorically while he set up the necessary paraphernalia. He doubted that the giant robot could hear or comprehend anything in its present state. "Unfortunately, I am not equipped to operate on the unit itself, and I don't have a replacement. I'll have to relieve the pain by bridging around the tooth—in essence, shorting out the short. This is crude, and will render the tooth inoperative, but unless it is a critical unit the rest of your system should be able to function. You'll have to seek help at a thoroughly equipped robotoid clinic to have that tooth replaced, however, and I wouldn't delay if I were you. My jury-rig won't be any too stable, and you don't want a relapse."

Yet it would have been simple for a native dentist to bridge the tooth. Why hadn't that been done? What were they so afraid of, to allow an ancient cousin to suffer unnecessarily like this? Surely a single Jann, the only survivor of its kind, could not imperil a planet, even if it should have a mind to. And if it were that dangerous, the fact that a University dentist had repaired it would not dispose it any more kindly towards the errant locals.

Too bad he hadn't had a chance to review the history of the Jann uprising. Maybe some of these annoying inconsistencies would have been explained. But with Oyster running off so suddenly... well, this creature was in pain and needed help.

He was ready. He applied the bridge and soldered the terminals. The job itself was nothing; the skill had been required for the electronic preparations, the verification of tolerances, the location of circuits. It would have been a mistake to remove the tooth, for it was in series with the others so that the extraction could have been fatal for the patient. And many robots, his cram-course said, were programmed to self-destruct when killed. They were living bombs.

The keening faded. The bypassed tooth began to cool. The Jann moved one glittering arm a few inches. "Nnnnn," it said, the sound emerging from a grill in its forehead. A bulb set in the side of its head began to glow softly. An eye?

Relieved but apprehensive now that the job had been done, Dillingham stood back and awaited developments. He wanted to be sure his field surgery had been effective, as a matter of professional pride and compassion. Should the patient seem to be worse, he would have to undo his handiwork and try again.

The earth and rock around the Jann's nether portions cracked and bucked. A sleek massive foot ripped out of the ground, spraying fragments of rock in a semi-circle. The Jann hefted its body, moving its shining limbs with ponderous splendour. It was a magnificent hunk of machinery.

"Nnonne," it said on hands and knees, raising its head to cover Dillingham with a small antenna.

Was that a groan or a comment? Of course it would speak a strange language, assuming it used vocal communication at all, and his little Oyster/Tarantula/English transcoder would be useless without the appropriate spool. He would have to judge by the robot's actions and manner.

The Jann stood, towering monstrously above him. "None but I," it said, the volume deafening, the tones reverberating as though emanating from the lower register of a mighty organ.

None but I? That sounded perilously like English, and it hadn't come through the transcoder.

"Are you—do you—?" Dillingham faltered. Even if this Jann embodied a full translator, it could hardly have a setting for English. It had been buried for tens of centuries!

The Jann peered down at him with prismatic lenses that opened from a formerly blank area of its head. Sunlight glinted from its stainless torso and wisps of steam rose from its fingertips, giving it the aspect of a rainbow in fog. "NONE BUT I," it boomed, "SHALL DO THEE DIE!"

Oh-oh.

"There seems to be a misunderhension," Dillingham said, backing away as surreptitiously as he could manage. "I mean misapprestanding..." He whistled ineffectively. "I wasn't—I didn't—I mean, I
fixed
your tooth, or at least—" He tripped over a rock and sat down abruptly.

The Jann stepped towards him, and the earth shuddered. "Thou didst release me from mine bondage," it said, moderating its volume but none of its timbre. "Thou didst bypass the short."

Dillingham pushed himself back without getting up. "Yes. Yes! That's the idea."

The Jann reached forth a scintillating arm and pointed a finger oddly like a cannon at Dillingham's head. "Listen, mortal, for I have somewhat to impart to thee."

Dillingham froze where he was. He did not like the giant's attitude—in fact, he was terrified—but there was no point in acting precipitously.

"In the days and years of strife between the tribes of the Jann and the minor ilk," it said, "it was my misfortune to bite down carelessly on a button-grenade and so befoul a circuit, nor could I recover the use of my body while that geis was upon me, though my mind was sound except for the pain. And so when I was buried thereafter by refuse my companions located me not, for it was wartime and there was much electrostatic interference and other distraction, and they thought me defunct. I perceived all manner of newsbands and converse in my area, as was my wont, but could not respond, and great was my suffering. In that pit I abode an thousand years, during which I said in my heart, "Whoso shall release me, him will I enrich for ever and ever." But the full millennium went by, and when no one set me free I entered upon the second thousand saying, "Whoso shall release me, for him will I fulfil three wishes." Yet no one set me free. Thereupon I waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said to myself, "Whoso shall release me from this time forth, no one but I shall do him die." And now, as thou hast released me, needs must I honour that oath."

It was obvious to Dillingham that he faced a deranged robot. That bypassed tooth must have contained an important sanity circuit. But it was too late to undo the damage; the Jann would hardly let him near that tooth again. It would, in fact, kill him first.

But the story sounded familiar. The Jann, imprisoned—that was it? The spirit in the bottle, sworn to kill whoever released him. A fisherman had brought up the bottle in his net and unwittingly uncorked it...

Dillingham understood, now, why the locals had been so chary of this patient. Who wanted to gamble on the particular oath in force at the moment of release?

How had that fisherman got out of it? There had been a gimmick—

The Jann stumbled, and Dillingham lunged away from it. "My powerpack is almost depleted!" the robot lamented. "Four thousand years of that accursed short-circuit, yet I preserved my life-power until this moment! Had it not been my caution-synapse you bridged out, I would have realized the danger before expending power recklessly in breaking out of the rock and defining my motive. I can hardly move!"

Good news! Dillingham scrambled up the side of the pit and ran.

"O mortal!" the great voice called after him. "Wouldst desert me in this sad state, and my power insufficient to free myself from this ugly hole?"

Dillingham cursed himself for his stupidity, but was oddly moved by the plea. He stopped. "Will you change your mind about killing me, if I help you again?"

"Mortal, I can not gainsay an oath of twenty centuries. None but I shall do thee die."

"Then why should I help you?"

But the Jann, having exhausted its small remaining charge, could only repeat in fading resonance, "None but I..."