To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (40 page)

“Father Cleary didn’t look at it that way.”

“Good for him. I wonder what happened to the poor bastard?”

“Should you be talking like this, Captain?”

“I shouldn’t. But with you it doesn’t matter. You know what I’m thinking, anyhow. But this Mr. Adam, Spooky. A missionary? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s just the
feeling
I get.”

Grimes ignored this. “Or, perhaps, it does make sense. The robots of Mr. Adam’s class are designed to be able to go where Man himself cannot go. In our own planetary system, for example, they’ve carried out explorations on Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. A robot missionary on Tarvark would have made sense, being impervious to poisoned arrows, spears, and the like. But on Delacron, an Earth colony? No.”

“But I still get that
feeling,
”
insisted Deane.

“There are feelings
and
feelings,” Grimes told him. “Don’t forget that this is non-organic mind that you’re prying into. Perhaps you don’t know the code, the language . . .”

“Codes and languages don’t matter to a telepath.” Deane contrived to make his empty glass obvious. Grimes refilled it. “Don’t forget, Captain, that there are machines on Delacron,
intelligent
machines. Not a very high order of intelligence, I admit, but . . . And you must have heard of the squabble between Delacron and its nearest neighbor, Muldoon . . .”

Grimes had heard of it. Roughly midway between the two planetary systems was a sun with only one world in close orbit about it—and that solitary planet was a fantastic treasure house of radioactive ores. Both Delacron and Muldoon had laid claim to it. Delacron wanted the rare metals for its own industries, the less highly industrialized Muldoon wanted them for export to other worlds of the Federation.

And Mr. Adam? Where did he come into it? Officially, according to his papers, he was a programmer, on loan from the Federation’s Grand Council to the Government of Delacron. A programmer . . . A teacher of machines . . . An intelligent machine to teach other intelligent machines . . . To teach other intelligent machines
what?

And who had programmed
him—
or had he just, as it were, happened?

A familiar pattern—vague, indistinct, but nonetheless there—was beginning to emerge. It had all been done before, this shipping of revolutionaries into the places in which they could do the most harm by governments absolutely unsympathetic towards their aspirations . . .

“Even if Mr. Adam had a beard,” said Deane, “he wouldn’t
look
much like Lenin . . .”

And Grimes wondered if the driver who brought that train into the Finland Station knew what he was doing.

Grimes was just the engine driver, and Mr. Adams was the passenger, and Grimes was tied down as much by the Regulations of his Service as was that long ago railwayman by the tracks upon which his locomotive ran. Grimes was blessed—or cursed—with both imagination and a conscience, and a conscience is too expensive a luxury for a junior officer. Those who can afford such a luxury all too often decide that they can do quite nicely without it.

Grimes actually wished that in some way Mr. Adam was endangering the ship. Then he, Grimes, could take action, drastic action if necessary. But the robot was less trouble than the average human passenger. There were no complaints about monotonous food, stale air and all the rest of it. About the only thing that could be said against him was that he was far too good a chess player, but just about the time that Grimes was trying to find excuses for not playing with him he made what appeared to be a genuine friendship, and preferred the company of Mr. McCloud to that of any the other officers.

“Of course, Captain,” said Beadle, “they belong to the same clan.”

“What the hell do you mean, Number One?”

Deadpan, Beadle replied, “The Clan MacHinery.”

Grimes groaned, then, with reluctance, laughed. He said, “It makes sense. A machine will have more in common with our Engineering Officer than the rest of us. Their shop talk must be fascinating.” He tried to initiate McCloud’s accent. “An’ tell me, Mr. Adam, whit sorrt o’ lubricant d’ye use on yon ankle joint?”

Beadle, having made his own joke, was not visibly amused. “Something suitable for heavy duty I should imagine, Captain.”

“Mphm. Well, if Mac keeps him happy, he’s out of our hair for the rest of the trip.”

“He’ll keep Mac happy, too, Captain. He’s always moaning that he should have an assistant.”

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” cracked Grimes. “Set a machine to . . . to . . .”

“Work a machine?” suggested Beadle.

Those words would do, thought Grimes, but after the First Lieutenant had left him he began to consider the implications of what had been discussed. McCloud was a good engineer—but the better the engineer, the worse the psychological shortcomings. The Machine had been developed to be Man’s slave—but ever since the twentieth century a peculiar breed of Man had proliferated that was all too ready and willing to become the Machine’s servants, far too prone to sacrifice human values on the altar of Efficiency. Instead of machines being modified to suit their operators, men were being modified to suit the machines. And McCloud? He would have been happier in industry than in the Survey Service, with its emphasis on officer-like qualities and all the rest of it. As it was, he was far too prone to regard the ship merely as the platform that carried his precious engines.

Grimes sighed. He didn’t like what he was going to do. It was all very well to snoop on passengers, on outsiders—but to pry into the minds of his own people was not gentlemanly.

He got out the gin bottle and called for Mr. Deane.

“Yes, Captain?” asked the telepath.

“You know what I want you for, Spooky.”

“Of course. But I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.” Grimes poured the drinks, handed the larger one to Deane. The psionic communications officer sipped in an absurdly genteel manner, the little finger of his right hand extended. The level of the transparent fluid in his glass sank rapidly.

Deane said, his speech ever so slightly slurred, “And you think that the safety of the ship is jeopardized?”

“I do.” Grimes poured more gin—but not for himself.

“If I have your assurance, Captain, that such is the case . . .”

“You have.”

Deanne was silent for a few seconds, looking through rather than at Grimes, staring at something . . . elsewhere. Then: “They’re in the computer room. Mr. Adam and the Chief. I can’t pick up Adam’s thoughts—but I feel a sense of . . . rightness? But I can get into Mac’s mind . . .” On his almost featureless visage the grimace of extreme distaste was startling. “I . . . I don’t understand . . .”

“You don’t understand what, Spooky?”

“How a man, a human being, can regard a hunk of animated ironmongery with such reverence . . .”

“You’re not a very good psychologist, Spooky, but go on.”

“I . . . I’m looking at Adam through Mac’s eyes. He’s bigger, somehow, and he seems to be self-luminous, and there’s a sort of circle of golden light around his head . . .”

“That’s the way that Mac sees him?”

“Yes. And his voice. Adam’s voice. It’s not the way that
we
hear it. It’s more like the beat of some great engine . . . And he’s saying, ‘You believe, and you will serve.’ And Mac has just answered, ‘Yes, Master. I believe, and I will serve.’”

“What are they
doing!
”
demanded Grimes urgently.

“Mac’s opening up the computer. The memory bank, I think it is. He’s turned to look at Adam again, and a panel over Adam’s chest is sliding away and down, and there’s some sort of storage bin in there, with rows and rows of pigeonholes. Adam has taken something out of one of them . . . A ball of greyish metal or plastic, with connections all over its surface. He’s telling Mac where to put it in the memory bank, and how to hook it up . . .”

Grimes, his glass clattering unheeded to the deck, was out of his chair, pausing briefly at his desk to fling open a drawer and to take from it his .50 automatic. He snapped at Deane, “Get on the intercom. Tell every officer off duty to come to the computer room, armed if possible.” He ran through the door out into the alleyway, then fell rather than clambered down the ladder to the next deck, and to the next one, and the next. At some stage of his descent he twisted his ankle, painfully, but kept on going.

The door to the computer room was locked, from the inside—but Grimes, as Captain, carried always on his person the ship’s master key. With his left hand—the pistol was in his right—he inserted the convoluted sliver of metal into the slot, twisted it. The panel slid open.

McCloud and Adam stared at him, at the weapon in his hand. He stared back. He allowed his gaze to wander, but briefly. The cover plate had been replaced over the memory bank—but surely that heavily insulted cable leading to and through it was something that had been added, was an additional supply of power, too much power, to the ship’s electronic bookkeeper.

McCloud smiled—a vague sort of smile, yet somehow exalted, that looked odd on his rough-hewn features. He said, “You and your kind are finished, Captain. You’d better tell the dinosaurs, Neanderthal Man, the dodo, the great auk, and all the others to move over to make room for you.”

“Mr. McCloud,” ordered Grimes, his voice (not without effort on his part) steady, “switch off the computer, then undo whatever it is that you have done.”

It was Adam who replied. “I am sorry, genuinely sorry, Mr. Grimes, but it is too late. As Mr. McCloud implied, you are on the point of becoming extinct.”

Grimes was conscious of the others behind him in the alleyway. “Mr. Beadle?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Take Mr. Slovetny with you down to the engine room. Cut off all power to this section of the ship.”

“You can try,” said Mr. Adam. “But you will not be allowed. I give notice now; I am the Master.”

“You are the Master,” echoed McCloud.

“Mutiny,” stated Grimes.

“Mutiny?” repeated Adam, iron and irony in his voice. He stepped towards the Captain, one long, metallic arm upraised.

Grimes fired. He might as well have been using a pea-shooter. He fired again, and again. The bullets splashed like pellets of wet clay on the robot’s armor. He realized that it was too late for him to turn and run; he awaited the crushing impact of the steel fist that would end everything.

There was a voice saying, “No . . .
No . . .
”

Was it his own? Dimly, he realized that it was not.

There was the voice saying, “No!”

Surprisingly Adam hesitated—but only for a second. Again he advanced—and then, seemingly from the computer itself, arced a crackling discharge, a dreadful, blinding lightning. Grimes, in the fleeting instant before his eyelids snapped shut, saw the automaton standing there, arms outstretched rigidly from his sides, black amid the electric fire that played about his body. Then, as he toppled to the deck, there was a metallic crash.

When, at long last, Grimes regained his eyesight he looked around the computer room. McCloud was unharmed—physically. The engineer was huddled in a corner, his arms over his head, in a fetal position. The computer, to judge from the wisps of smoke still trickling from cracks in its panels, was a total write-off. And Adam, literally welded to the deck, still in that attitude of crucifixion, was dead.

Dead . . .
thought Grimes numbly.
Dead . . .
Had he ever been alive, in the real sense of the word?

But the ship, he knew, had been briefly alive, had been aware, conscious, after that machine which would be God had kindled the spark of life in her electronic brain. And a ship, unlike other machines, always has personality, a pseudo-life derived from her crew, from the men who live and work, hope and dream within her metal body.

This vessel had known her brief minutes of full awareness, but her old virtues had persisted, among them loyalty to her rightful captain.

Grimes wondered if he would dare to put all this in the report that he would have to make. It would be a pity not to give credit where credit was due.

The Sleeping Beauty

Commodore Damien,
Officer Commanding Couriers, was not in a very good mood. This was not unusual—especially on the occasions when Lieutenant Grimes, captain of the Serpent Class Courier
Adder,
happened to be on the carpet.

“Mr. Grimes . . .” said the Commodore in a tired voice.

“Sir!” responded Grimes smartly.

“Mr. Grimes, you’ve been and gone and done it
again.
”

The Lieutenant’s prominent ears reddened. “I did what I could to save my ship and my people, sir.”

“You destroyed a
very
expensive piece of equipment, as well as playing merry hell with the Federation’s colonial policy. My masters—who, incidentally, are also
your
masters—are not, repeat not, amused.”

“I saved my ship,” repeated Grimes stubbornly.

The Commodore looked down at the report on his desk. A grim smile did little, if anything, to soften the harsh planes of his bony face. “It says here that your ship saved you.”

“She did,” admitted Grimes. “It was sort of mutual . . .”

“And it was your ship that killed—I suppose that ‘kill’ is the right word to use regarding a highly intelligent robot—Mr. Adam . . . H’m. A
slightly
extenuating circumstance. Nonetheless, Grimes, were it not for the fact that you’re a better than average spaceman you’d be O-U-bloody-T, trying to get a job as Third Mate in Rim Runners or some such outfit.” He made a steeple of his skeletal fingers, glared at the Lieutenant coldly over the bony erection. “So, in the interests of all concerned, I’ve decided that your
Adder
will not be carrying any more passengers for a while—at least, not with you in command of her. Even so, I’m afraid that you’ll not have much time to enjoy the social life—such as it is—of Base . . .”