Troublemakers (27 page)

   
He awoke with a start!

   
He saved himself only by his unconscious. Even in the hell of a nightmare he was aware of the situation. He had not moaned and writhed in his delirium. He had kept motionless and silent.

   
He knew it was true, because he was still alive.

   
Only his surprised jerking, as he came back to consciousness, started the monster rolling from its niche. He came fully awake and sat silent, slumped against the wall. The robot retreated.

   
Thin breath came through his nostrils. Another moment and he would have put an end to the past three days-three days or more now? how long had he been asleep?-days of torture.

   
He was hungry. Lord how hungry he was. The pain in his side was worse now, a steady throbbing that made even shallow breathing tortuous. He itched maddeningly. He was uncomfortably slouched against a cold steel bulkhead, every rivet having made a burrow for itself in his skin. He wished he was dead.

   
He didn’t wish he was dead. It was all too easy to get his wish.

   
If he could only disable that robot brain. A total impossibility. If he could only wear Phobos and Deinlos for watch fobs. If he could only shack-up with a silicon-deb from Penares. If he could only use his large colon for a lasso.

   
It would take a thorough destruction of the brain to do it enough damage to stop the appendage before it could roll over and smash Terrence again.

   
With a steel bulkhead between him and the brain, his chances of success totaled minus zero every time.

   
He considered which part of his body the robot would smash first. One blow of that tool-hand would kill him if it was used a second time. With the state of his present wounds, even a strong breath might finish him.

   
Perhaps he could make a break and get through the lock into the decompression chamber...

   
Worthless. (A) The robot would catch him before he had gotten to his feet, in his present condition. (B) Even allowing a miracle, even if he did get through the lock, the robot would smash the lock port, letting in air, ruining the mechanism. (C) Even allowing a double miracle and it didn’t, what the hell good would it do him? His helmet and gloves were in the hutch itself, and there was no place to go on the planetoid. The ship was ruined, so no signal could be sent from there.

   
Doom suddenly compounded itself.

   
The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that soon the light would flicker out for him.

   
The light would flicker out.

   
The light would flicker...

   
The light...

   
...light...?

   
Oh God, is it possible? Can it be? Have I found an answer?
He marveled at the simplicity of it. It had been there for more than three days waiting for him to use it. It was
so
simple it was magnificent. He could hardly restrain himself from moving, just out of sheer joy.

   
I’m not brilliant, I’m not a genius, why did this occur to me?
For a few minutes the brilliance of the solution staggered him. Would a less intelligent man have solved the problem this easily? Would a
more
intelligent man have done it? Then he remembered the dream. The light in the dream.
He
hadn’t solved the problem, his unconscious had. The answer had been there all the time, but he was too close to see it. His mind had been forced to devise a way to tell him. Luckily, it had.

   
And finally, he didn’t care
how
he had uncovered it. His God, if he had had anything to do with it, had heard him. Terrence was by no means a religious man, but this was miracle enough to make him a believer. It wasn’t over yet, but the answer was there-and it
was
an answer.

   
He began to save himself.

   
Slowly, achingly slowly, he moved his right hand, the hand away from the robot’s sight, to his belt. On the belt hung the assorted implements a spaceman needs at any moment in his ship. A wrench. A packet of sleep-stavers. A compass. A geiger counter. A flashlight.

   
The last was the miracle. Miracle in a tube.

   
He fingered it almost reverently, then unclipped it in a moment’s frenzy, still immobile to the robot’s “eyes.”

   
He held it at his side, away from his body by a fraction of an inch, pointing up over the bulge of his spacesuited leg.

   
If the robot looked at him, all it would see would be the motionless bulk of his leg, blocking off any movement on his part. To the machine, he was inert. Motionless.

   
Now
he thought wildly,
where is the brain?

   
If it is behind the relay machines, I’m still dead. If it is near the refrigerator, I’m saved. He could afford to take no chances. He would have to move.

   
He lifted one leg.

   
The robot moved toward him. The humming and sparking were more distinct this time. He dropped the leg.

   
Behind the plates above the refrigerator!

   
The robot stopped, nearly at his side. Seconds had decided. The robot hummed, sparked, and returned to its niche.

   
Now he knew!

   
He pressed the button. The invisible beam of the flashlight leaped out, speared the bulkhead above the refrigerator. He pressed the button again and again, the flat circle of light appearing, disappearing, appearing, disappearing on the faceless metal of the life hutch’s wall.

   
The robot sparked and rolled from its niche. It looked once at Terrence. Its rollers changed direction in an instant and the machine ground toward the refrigerator.

   
The steeled fist swung in a vicious arc, smashing with a deafening clang! at the spot where the light bubble flickered on and off.

   
It swung again and again. Again and again till the bulkhead had been gouged and crushed and opened, and the delicate coils and plates and circuits and memorex modules behind it were refuse and rubble. Until the robot froze, with arm half-ready to strike again. Dead. Immobile. Brain and appendage.

   
Even then Terrence did not stop pressing the flashlight button. Wildly he thumbed it again and again and again.

   
Then he realized it was allover.

   
The robot was dead. He was alive. He would be saved. He had no doubts about that.
Now
he could cry.

   
The medicine chest grew large through the shimmering in his eyes. The relay machines smiled at him.

   
God bless you, little life hutch,
he thought, before he fainted.

Wrote this one a couple of times, made it better each time I went after it. Then turned it into a TV segment on
Tales from the Darkside.
You may have seen it. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played the Djinn. (Don’t lose your day-job Kareem.) And the lesson passim this little tale is a good one for those of you who, like me, lead lives determinedly singular and oftimes cutting trail with trouble. The lesson is the same one Nelson Algren included in his famous three rules for living, as they were codified in a terrific novel called The
Man With the Golden Arm.
He said, “Never eat at a diner called “Mom’s,’ never play cards with a guy named ‘Doc,’ and never get involved with a woman who’s got bigger troubles than you.” (It was a “guy” novel, so if you’re feeling foolishly Politically Correct, which is a pain in the patoot, you can substitute “never get involved with a
“guy”
for “woman.”) If you learn nothing else from me in the course of reading this little tome, kiddies, let it be this: bad companions can drag your snout down into the mud faster than dope or drink or deep religious\ fervor. The world is full of leaners. People who are bone-stick-stone stupid, but they’ve got a low ratlike cunning. They know how to side you and smooth you and get into your pocket, and then give you ‘tude about how you be hare
-assing
them when you call them and demand they repay you. They will involve you in idiot schemes, they will waste your time and your energy, they will mooch off you and eventually abandon you, step off when someone starts making static. They are the “bad companions” your momma and poppa warned you about. They are the yamps and shermheads, the biscuits and trife bums who will kill your waking hours and give you night fright when you lie down. The lesson is this: make your own way. Set your own pace. Do not get drawn into some non-productive Jay-up that will sap your strength and let the air out of your dreams. In this story, a pretty nice guy and a pretty nice woman, who probably shouldn’t have rolled on a duo, find themselves paying the price for each other’s bad company. Yeah, sure, it’s got a happy ending, but this is a
story,
gee, it’s a piece of fiction! It ain’t real.

W
ho the hell ever heard of Turkish Period?” Danny Squires said. He said it at the top of his voice, on a city street.

   
“Danny! People are staring at us; lower your voice!” Connie Squires punched his bicep. They stood on the street, in front of the furniture store. Danny was determined not to enter.

   
“Come on, Connie,” he said, “let’s get away from these junk shops and go see some inexpensive modern stuff. You know perfectly well I don’t make enough to start filling the apartment with expensive antiques.”

   
Connie furtively looked up and down the street-she was more concerned with a “scene” than with the argument itself-and then moved in toward Danny with a determined air. “Now listen up, Squires.
Did
you or did
not
marry me four days ago, and promise to love, honor and cherish and all that other good jive?”

   
Danny’s blue eyes rolled toward Heaven; he knew he was losing ground. Instinctively defensive, he answered. “Well, sure, Connie, but-”

   
“Well, then, I am your wife, and you have not taken me on a honeymoon-”

   
“I can’t
afford
one!”

   
“-have not taken me on a honeymoon,” Connie repeated with inflexibility. “Consequently, we will buy a little furniture for that rabbit warren you laughingly call our little love nest. And
little
is hardly the term: that vale of tears was criminally undersized when Barbara Fritchie hung out her flag.

   
“So to make my life
bearable,
for the next few weeks, till we can talk Mr. Upjohn into giving you a raise-”

   
“Upjohn!” Danny fairly screamed. “You’ve got to stay away from the boss, Connie. Don’t screw around. He won’t give me a raise, and I’d rather you stayed away from him-”

   
“Until then,” she went on relentlessly, “we will decorate our apartment in the style I’ve wanted for years.”

   
“Turkish Period?”

   
“Turkish Period.”

   
Danny flipped his hands in the air. What was the use? He had known Connie was strong-willed when he’d married her.

   
It had seemed an attractive quality at the time; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was strong-willed too; he was sure he could outlast her. Probably.