01 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Read online

  Buck nodded and muttered something to himself. He snapped off the flame o� his lighter and restored it to his pocket, then set off again at a run, Twiki following him faithfully, Theopolis bouncing from his harness around the neck of the little quad.

  The pace of Buck’s progress and the darkness of the city made it hard for the drone and the computer-brain to follow him. At one point they lost Buck completely, then, as Twiki stood, rotating his body and his optical sensors in hope of picking up the man again, Theopolis exclaimed, “There he is! That way, Twiki! Don’t let us get lost again!”

  Twiki squeaked and looked around once again. He and Theopolis could see sinister forms gathering behind them in the gloom, most of them huddling in doorways, clinging close to the walls of ruined buildings at the edges of the street, a few of the bolder ones standing in a group in the middle of the street, their number growing with every passing second as the drone and the computer seemed almost visibly to tremble with fear.

  Twiki squealed frantically and Theopolis replied, his usually soothing voice somewhat higher and less steady than before. “I know, Twiki,” Theopolis said. “I see them, tool Let’s just keep going on after Buck. He knows what he’s doing. He’s our leader, and I’m sure he has a very good plan to get us out of this scrape.”

  Again the drone squealed in fright.

  “Don’t think thoughts like that,” Theopolis scolded. “It runs down your batteries. There, now don’t get panicky, I’m sure we can find Buck. Look, I’m sure he just went around that corner. Let’s follow him.”

  The drone brought up short before a rusting iron fence broken by a pair of massive stone pillars and a scroll-like gate that hung from hinges broken centuries before and rusted shut. Twiki and Theopolis read the ornate scroll-like lettering that surmounted the gateway.

  “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my merciful heavens, this is simply too much, simply too much for my circuits. I think I’m going to blow a fuse if this goes on.”

  The quad squeaked again.

  “Of course I’ll tell you what it says,” Theopolis placated the frantic drone. “I do wish they’d build literacy circuits into you quads, it’s such a nuisance having to read to you all the time.”

  Squeak!

  “Oh, I know it isn’t your fault, Twiki. You’re an absolutely splendid quad and I wouldn’t trade you for any other, no matter how new and shiny he was, and no matter how many special circuits he had built into his control unit.”

  Squeal!

  “Oh, you still want to know what it says up there, do you? I was rather hoping that you’d forgot about that, Twiki my friend. Well, I guess there’s nothing for it but to tell the truth. It says, Cemetery.”

  Twiki rotated his optical sensors and squealed in terror. A group of the horrifying mutated forms was growing larger and larger behind them. Some of the more daring of the mutants were feinting moves toward the drone and his computer-friend.

  “Come on, Twiki,” Theopolis urged. “I know you’re scared of graveyards, but we have a lot more to be frightened of from the living than we have from the dead!”

  The drone scuttered forward on his short metallic legs, scuttling over the threshold of the cemetery and into the frightening, centuries-haunted domain of the departed. Here the rank growth of sickly plant-life that filled so much of Anarchia had gone completely wild. The ancient hemlocks and oleanders that stood throughout the necropolis had grown to enormous height and thickness, so that even by daylight the cemetery existed in a kind of perpetual gloom.

  And now it was night, the sky was overcast, and the heavy vegetation made for a stygian blackness. Rank grasses had grown up, so the drone had to struggle constantly, not merely to make progress through the stifling growth, but even to raise his optical sensing devices above the level of the grasses.

  Ancient tombstones that had not fallen completely to the ground with the passing of years, stood crazily angled, ready to catch on the footpad of any unwary passing quad. Old graves had fallen in, leaving the ground surface uneven beneath the tall, rank grasses. Because of this, Twiki quickly learned, any step might plunge him into an old grave, taking Dr. Theopolis helplessly with him.

  Mausoleums, constructed to stand until Gabriel sounded the Last Trumpet on the Day of Judgment had yielded to the ravages of time. Some had been smashed flat by the terrible blast of the holocaust that created Anarchia. Others had fallen prey to the plunderers and looters who came in the wake of the blast, and still others had simply fallen in, collapsing in response to the slowly eroding forces of nature, the freezes of winter, the snows and ice of the cold season, the thaws and rains of spring, the hot baking suns of summer and the new, contracting coolness of each of five hundred autumns.

  Panic-stricken, Twiki plunged from gravestone to mausoleum, squealing with each tumble that he took, scuttling away from each little echo of sound, almost shrieking with fright at the sounds of the mutant band beating the grasses in search of himself and Theopolis and the complex circuits and rare, precious metals that they hoped to salvage from the two machines.

  Suddenly Twiki’s metal foot caught on the hidden edge of a fallen gravestone and he found himself tumbling not onto the grassy turf of the cemetery, but the prostrate, grieving form of Buck Rogers.

  Twiki squeaked.

  Dr. Theopolis, his lights blinking and glowing in a virtual kaleidoscope of forms and colors, exclaimed, “Buck! We’ve found you!”

  The only light was the eerie shifting array of colors provided by the facelike display pattern on Dr. Theopolis’ control panel. Even in this pale and shifting illumination the two machine-people could see that Buck’s back was heaving, not with injury or exertion, but with the strength of the emotion that he felt.

  Twiki managed to right himself, and as he did so the lights of Dr. Theopolis’ facelike panel illuminated the gravestone upon which Buck had flung himself.

  In the pale, eerie light, Theopolis scanned the inscription. Twiki squealed his impatience and the computer-brain read aloud the words carved upon the marble:

  EDNA AND JAMES ROGERS

  THEIR SON FRANK AND

  DAUGHTER MARILYN

  APRIL

  There was no date or year. If they had ever been inscribed on the marble headstone, they had long ago been lost to the ravages of some violent act.

  As Twiki and Theopolis stood silently, Buck Rogers slowly rose from the stone. He held his lighter in his hand—obviously, he had used it to read the headstone before Twiki arrived with Dr. Theopolis to give illumination. There were tears in Buck Rogers’ eyes. He recognized the two metallic beings and nodded to them in acknowledgement of their presence.

  “At least I know part of it,” Buck said. “My parents, my brother and sister … of course there were others. What’s happened to them is still unknown.”

  He breathed deeply, getting better control of himself. “Of course, if all of that was five hundred years ago, I don’t suppose it really matters anymore. Did they know what had happened to me, before they died? Did they live on for five more years—or fifty? Well,” he shrugged, “at least I’ve seen their grave. For whatever that may be worth.”

  “Buck,” Theopolis said soothingly. “I don’t mean to intrude on your hour of grief.”

  Buck gazed down at the computer-brain hanging from the neck of the drone.

  “But we can’t really stay here,” Theopolis resumed. “We, ah—somebody followed us here. Twiki and me. It would be very dangerous for us to stay here. Ah, maybe even fatal, Buck.”

  Buck was still caught up in his grief. It was as if he were divorced from the reality of the moment and had been thrown back through time to unravel the mystery of the fate of his family and friends.

  “What happened to them?” he asked. “There’s no date on the marker. And there’s only one marker for Mother and Dad and Marilyn and Frank. What could have happened to them? And to the others?”

  “Only the few fortunate ones were buried at all,” Theopolis supplied. “It happened
to them so fast, Buck. Families were buried together. Dates became unimportant when all the systems of civilization broke down.

  “There were no newspapers or television anymore. People lost track. Living was strictly day-today. At first it was thought that the first few millions who died in the holocaust were the end of the horror. But the war went on, and more died. More war, more killing, more war, more killing.

  “Finally the fighting stopped only because there were no more armies left to fight. There were only the tattered survivors, struggling to survive in the face of starvation, contamination, radiation, and then—plague.”

  Buck knelt once again and pressed his forehead to the cold stone. “God bless them,” he whispered. “I’d go back there and die at their side if I had my way.”

  “But you can’t, Buck. The past is gone.” All of the agitation, all of the past hours’ part-serious, part-mocking terror and banter was gone from Theopolis’ voice. He was as serious now as ever he had been, and Buck understood the real concern that he heard in Theopolis’ statement.

  For the first time he had a full understanding of a strange fact concerning the computer-brain.

  Back in Buck’s own time there had been long and heated debate as to whether computers could really think and/or feel. Engineers and programmers at the great university computing laboratories and at the research centers of the huge electronics companies had been able to build and program machines that could convincingly simulate both emotion and intelligence.

  But—were these merely simulations, or were the machines really thinking? Were they really feeling? What was thought? What was emotion?

  One early and clever experiment had involved placing a series of volunteer subjects on one end of a telephone line, the other end of which might be connected to a trained conversational specialist… or to a computer. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.

  The volunteers were permitted to converse over the telephone for as long as they wished, until they were convinced that they knew the identity of the voice on the other end of the line. They were then instructed to terminate the conversation and mark on a score card whether they believed they had been speaking with a human being or with a cleverly programmed machine.

  After a series of dry runs that were used to refine the computer program, the sponsors of the experiment began keeping records of the volunteers’ judgments. They discovered that the rate of correct identifications was equally high, whether the second conversationalist was a person or a machine.

  But that didn’t convince anyone!

  Those who had believed, before the experiment, that machines could really think and feel, claimed that their position had been vindicated.

  And those who believed that machines could only mimic the outward evidence of thought or feeling, wound up as convinced as ever, that their own position had been vindicated!

  As an astronaut, Buck was expected to become thoroughly familiar with the programming and performance and even, to a certain extent, the circuitry of advanced computing machinery. He had wound up a skeptic on the big question—not quite fully convinced, but heavily inclined to think that computers only simulated human thought and feeling.

  But now, with Dr. Theopolis offering his solace and his counsel in the hour of Buck’s grief, the astronaut felt himself convinced at last that the computer-brain was not merely simulating human characteristics. Buck decided that Theopolis was truly thinking and truly feeling the emotions that he expressed.

  And in that moment it became clear to Buck for the first time that his whole strange experience was also real. The twentieth century and all its people were dead and gone. This bizarre new world of the twenty-fifth century with its quads and computer-brains, its magnificent domed Inner Cities and its seething, rubble-filled Anarchias, its Defense Squadron and space pirates and Draconian Empire, were all very, very real. And if he intended to live, he would have to close his mind to the world of his boyhood and learn to live in this brave new world, faulted and imperfect though it was!

  He started to express his thanks to Dr. Theopolis but he was interrupted by the frantic squealing of Twiki. Startled, Buck peered into the gloom beyond the drone. A chorus of grunts and inchoate shouts were echoing from the far corners of the graveyard.

  “You can’t save your past,” Dr. Theopolis murmured softly to Buck, “but you can help us survive in the present and in the future, Buck… if there is any future!”

  Even in the murkiness of the cemetery, Buck was able to see that a virtual wall of the horrifying mutants was moving slowly but relentlessly forward, threatening at moments to break into a final, fatal attack upon himself and Theopolis and Twiki.

  “Get behind me, quick!” Buck snapped at the quad. With Theopolis firmly hung about his neck, Twiki scuttled behind the astronaut.

  Buck knelt for a moment, not in renewed meditation or final, this-is-the-hour-of-our-death type of prayer, but in order to snatch up a handful of the tall, dry, parched weeds that grew rankly throughout the cemetery. With one hand he held the weeds before him; with the other, he flicked his fighter into life, its tiny butane flame flaring luridly against the murk.

  The weeds smouldered for a second. They were dry but not entirely dry. The night was far advanced, dew had already settled throughout the burying ground, and the dry weeds had been re-dampened by atmospheric condensation. Acrid smoke rose from the weeds. Buck didn’t know how much more fuel his lighter held, nor how much longer the mutants would delay their charge. At the moment they seemed to have been halted more by curiosity than by any other motive.

  With a low growl the apparent leader of the mutant band signed that he had had enough of this strange show. It was time to launch the final attack!

  The mutants sprang just at the moment that the weeds glowed for a moment, than sprang into bright, flaring flame!

  The leading mutant tumbled forward, landed almost in Buck’s arms. His face and hands smashed into Buck as the horrifying creature screamed with pain and terror as his flesh was bathed in the searing flames. He leaped backwards, ran screaming across the uneven earth of the burying ground.

  Some of the other mutants followed in his wake, but the remainder of the raider-band merely backed away, frightened, clearly, of the flame, yet not so frightened as to give up the prospect of this little group of potential victims.

  Buck took a step forward, gathering more weeds to add to his makeshift torch. Step by step the mutants retreated before him, but so numerous were they that their band closed in again behind Buck and the others. Now, saved though they were for the briefest of moments, they found themselves trapped again, completely surrounded by the raiders!

  “Quick,” Buck commanded Twiki and Dr. Theopolis, “hop onto my back! No discussion, move!”

  They obeyed as quickly as Buck had spoken. Grasping Dr. Theopolis firmly in one hand so he wouldn’t swing loose at the jump, little Twiki squealed once and launched himself with surprising strength and accuracy, if no great amount of grace, into the air. He landed on Buck’s tall shoulders, grabbed the astronaut with his free hand, settled Dr. Theopolis with the other, then clutched firmly at Buck Rogers’ neck and shoulders.

  “Hang on tight,” Buck gritted, “’cause here we go!”

  He bent and started a row-fire from the flaming weeds in his hands, skipping along, bending and setting fires, advancing a short distance and setting some more, extending the line he had created, slowly drawing a solid wall of flame between himself and his two machine-passengers on one side, and the mutant raiders on the other.

  Painfully but steadily they made their way across the graveyard in that fashion, Buck having to replenish his handheld torch every few dozen yards, while he watched the mutants dancing in impotent hatred on the other side of the row of flames that he raised. At the rusted iron gateway of the cemetery, Buck made a final flying leap, rolled onto the roadway outside, carefully dislodging Twiki as he did so. In a matter of seconds they were standing side by side, turning back for a qui
ck glimpse of the cemetery as the enraged mutant raiders poured from its mouth, setting off in hot pursuit of their escaping prey.

  “They haven’t quit,” Buck shouted. “Come on!”

  With Twiki at his side, Theopolis riding the drone as usual, Buck set off as fast as he could sprint, down the center of the cracked pavement. Here, outside the graveyard, the night was not quite as completely murk-shrouded as it was beneath the giant trees and overgrown shrubbery within the cemetery.

  Over his shoulder Buck could see the leader of the mutant band run to an old lamp post and seize a broken metal pipe from the gutter. He hefted the iron implement and began smashing it against the metal lamp post, sending up a resounding series of almost deafening clangs. The horrid man-thing kept up the deafening clanging for a time. Then Buck could hear a similar clamor resounding from across the city.

  For an instant Buck thought it was an actual echo of the pipe being wielded against the lamp post. Then he detected a difference in tone. Soon a third clamor joined the two, and another, and another, until the chill night air was filled with a deafening arrhythmic cacophony that set Buck’s teeth on edge and made the hairs at the back of his neck rise in shuddering sympathy.

  He ran, Twiki and Theopolis at his side, for block after ancient city block, but no matter how he dodged or turned or sped across the cracked pavement, the cacophonous clanging stayed with him and Theopolis and Twiki. Finally, he stopped, his breath rasping in and out of his aching lungs in great, desperate gasps.

  “What—” he tried to ask.

  “What—is it?” he managed to get the question out.

  Theopolis had no problem with breath, of course. “It’s a rather primitive communication system amongst the mutants,” he explained in a calm, professorial tone.