New Writings in SF 19 - [Anthology] Read online

  X stood in the pit of the place, in the only clear space, holding his Luger, the President dead at his feet, looking up at the boxes. It was wonderful. Altogether they were no more than eighteen cubic feet and all the Generator, all that great thing was contained in those grey boxes.

  Directly in front of him the President’s red switch remained. No longer mounted on a tree, but roughly screwed to one of the boxes. X turned quickly and the bomb hut was still there too. Much smaller than before, but it was there and the President had been telling the truth. X yanked down the switch and nothing happened.

  ‘I told you it was too late,’ said the Generator, “but something is still wrong and I can’t think of it.’

  There was a crash from the bomb hut. One side fell down in a flurry of the loose sand that was lightly scattered on the floor. The Curator and Newcomen came out carrying a chunk of the outer casing. White vapour boiled out with them, the steady pulse of the diesels stopped abruptly and the refrigerator cut out. The Dealer came out next with half of the Uranium from the inner bomb, then came the Joe android with the rest. The Wright brothers brought out the rest of the case and last of all came the Woman, frost on her face and arms, with the TNT charge, the detonator leads still dangling.

  ‘See...’ said the Generator. ‘But I wish I knew what was the matter ... I... I feel so stupid...’

  X saw where his last bullet had gone right through the President. Beyond that it had splattered blood and bone fragments on the box below the switch, there was also a small dented hole where the bullet had gone in.

  When X looked the bullet had broken up inside and torn multiple tracks through and out the other side. There was a little smoke and small sparks played in the darkness. There were eight more of the boxes and six of them had been hit. The holes in the fronts were small, but at the backs the exits were enormous.

  ‘See ...’ said the Generator. ‘You see I’ve dismantled the bomb ... I told you it was after T... You can’t... you can’t hurt me ...?’

  The androids walked off in different directions. X nodded and advanced on the two remaining boxes. His pistol was very powerful, it would do all that was wanted.

  He put the Luger’s muzzle six inches from the first box. He chose a point three inches from the bottom, angled the pistol slightly up and fired. The bullet entered two inches below the centre, travelled upwards through the box, shattered and smashed off the far side. One half of what remained of the Generator’s central system died. X adjusted his aim for the last box and hit it dead centre.

  He hefted the Luger and left it, warm and still smoking on the last box. A man didn’t need a hydrogen bomb to settle his differences with anybody, let alone a machine. He still admired the gun, but he didn’t want it any more. It was finished. He turned on his heel and stepped into the lift.

  ‘So once again your happiness generator triumphs !’ The people settled down again, relaxed. The last few minutes had been very exciting, but they were glad it was over. It had only been a drama after all, not real, just another entertainment. ‘The treacherous President has been killed by our agent, X. We chose him to serve us for that purpose. We brought him through, we planned all his thoughts and what he considered to be his decisions. Even while the evil President scraped together parts and materials for his diabolical bomb, even then we had the dupe X moving always towards him, never suspecting that we had armed him. Or why—believing in his destiny—that he would kill us!’ As the screens spoke the people laughed. The funnier moments were shown again and again, that night the whole Capital rocked with their laughter.

  ‘Relax ... our people. We, your Happiness Generator will attend to every little thing. Remember the desert outside ... trust us for your Happiness!

  ‘Right now—’It’s Tombola! From the Empress Hall in the Nice Part! And this week—a special—this week the winner becomes The World President! So watch those happy numbers!’

  The audience studied the symbols flicker on their screens. The Generator was warm and human and understood, it was confident, everything was wonderful. The screens didn’t actually go blank for quite a long time, the Generator had always prepared far enough ahead, but long before its voice finished the people had begun to wonder why the lights were dimming and why there was no water. Then, a little after, they were wondering why there were no more reassuring words, no new games, no more music. The screaming began in the vast, dead Capital.

  By then X was well established in his wooded valley. The farm was real enough and he was fully happy when the dog came to love him and stopped barking when he stood up. He panned a little gold for his whiskey and cheroots and when the dazed people began to come puzzled from the Fuller he was able to help them.

  <>

  * * * *

  STOOP TO CONQUER

  John Rackham

  Given two opposing armed forces whose battle tactics are worked out by computers of equal ability, then how break the deadlock?

  * * * *

  The howling wind that struck Caswell’s left shoulder and threatened to throw him off course had whooped its way down from the North Pole and seemed full of bitter determination to sweep him away just as it had effectively swept away everything else on the bleak iron-hard plateau. Snow as fine as flour further hampered vision already restricted by the shielding goggles he wore. Had it not been for the second-by-second radio-tone in each ear he would have long since lost his aim. So long as those two notes didn’t jangle he knew he was going in the right direction. That much the military outpost could do for him. They had also told him he had about three miles to go, on his own, before he struck the nearest Meden outpost. Three miles hadn’t seemed all that much, when he started out, but now it felt as if he had been plodding and slithering forward half a life-time.

  The hunched shoulder, tucked-in chin and squint forward into grey haze had become mechanical, leaving his mind free to go over, forwards and backwards, the reasons why he was here, almost as alien in this setting as the aliens he was going to meet. Reviewing data and trying it in various combinations was nothing new to him. Sam Caswell, BA, PhD, mathematician, poet and pianist, ardent pacifist, was also Chief Analyst of the Strategic Computer Complex of United Earth. That post had been created within weeks of the horrible reality of the Meden invasion of Earth, almost a year ago now, and it followed that Caswell knew as much as anybody and more than most about the Meden. Because he was a natural-born computer-man he wasn’t at all sure that he knew enough to justify what he was now doing. He wasn’t absolutely sure. Ninety-eight per cent plus was as close as he could make it, and the missing fraction bothered him a lot more than the slippery underfoot or the savagely cold wind. So he went ever it again, step by step, as he leaned into the bitter blast and struggled on.

  Almost exactly a year ago, the Meden had come, abruptly from nowhere, without warning, announcing their presence and intentions with stark efficiency. Dark and anonymous ships, a whole fleet of them, were suddenly there in orbit and while astonished humanity was still reacting to the surprise, out went the tiny and precarious outpost on Ganymede, out in a bigger show of fireworks went the struggling dome-colonies of Mars, and out, in a really spectacular but swift demonstration, went the whole Lunar complex. Within short hours of those body-blows came the neatly-tied-off-ends report that there remained not one single artificial satellite anywhere in Earth’s orbital space. Then, while everyone scrambled crazily for cover and wondered what to do next, the dark fleet divided itself neatly into two and came down, with neither flourish nor fanfare, to settle and dig in at either Pole. Then came the message, on all wave-bands and in creditably intelligible versions of all major Earth languages. Caswell could remember the exact words.

  ‘We are the Meden. We have taken your planet. Resistance is futile. We will allow you ten planetary revolutions to organise and arrange total surrender to us. Do this, serve us, and you will be well treated. Resist and we will use whatever force may be necessary to defeat you. We are the Meden ...’
>
  It had been a hectic year. Caswell’s thoughts, however, were more on the three decades that had immediately preceded the invasion. And on the vast string of centuries before that. And, like all other pacifists, he could have wept for the irony of it. Centuries of struggling with and against all those inborn urges to fight, the biological drives and imperatives, the lunatic persistence, right up to and hanging over the very fringes of total self destruction—a decade of trembling on the brink—and then, gingerly and delicately, hardly daring to breathe, the slow pull back. Mankind had at last made the choice that was no choice at all, the way of sanity, peace and goodwill. And for three nervous but ever more hopeful decades, it had been peace. Common-sense. Talk it out. Work it out. Solve it, don’t smash it!

  Caswell stumbled over a treacherous ice-lump and sprawled a moment, got painfully up, oriented himself by the noise in his ears and struggled on, leaning into the blast. Thirty years of peace and then the Meden had come, and Mankind had once more to turn and pick up the weapons that had been laid aside, hopefully for ever. Damn them!

  A year of madness. A year in which the Meden had put out forays, had demolished a minor city or two, just to show they could do it and in which their feeler offensives had been fought, shocked, stopped and thrown back, to show them they weren’t going to have it all their own way. A year, too, in which humans had mounted offensives against the two Polar bases and had been solidly and effectively repulsed by potent weapons and sophisticated defences. Skirmishes. And then stalemate. Caswell knew it, from his data. Into his hands came all the data. In short order Earth had combined and coalesced all its immense computer capacity into one giant network—a war machine—and its conclusions were impersonal and accurate, within narrow limits. Both sides had bigger and nastier weapons than they cared to use. Neither side wanted all-out final war when the prize was a radio-active waste-land.

  So the Machine said. And so Caswell had reported to his superiors, to the United Earth War Council, comprising World President Kolodin and his advisors and ministers, together with General Osborne, C-in-C of the Combined Services Command. Almost perfect stalemate. Which was intolerable. Which was why he was here. Grasping at a straw. And there, surely, was the Meden outpost? He halted to peer through the thin spindrift and saw ten white-clad shapes emerge from their watch-post hides, each holding a weapon. It was too late now for further consideration. He raised his arms in the universal sign of helplessness and shouted over the howling wind,

  ‘A truce! A truce! I come to talk!’ He was crazily tempted to add, ‘Take me to your leader!’ but restrained himself. It was just as well, for that’s what they did, anyway. Eventually.

  * * * *

  Onsep Ald, Dar of all the Meden-on-Earth, was not in a good mood. As the week’s data unrolled itself across the reader on his desk, that mood grew worse. Things were not going according to plan, and that, by Meden standards, was close to heresy. This planet, observed through an adequate period and seen to be peaceful, co-ordinated and intelligently inhabited, had suddenly transformed itself into a finger-burning brand. It didn’t make sense! He scowled at the tail-end of the figures, slapped the reader inert and glared up at his second-in-command, Odar Cylo Lan, who knew better than to show any emotion at all except a wooden-faced readiness to jump whichever way the wind blew.

  ‘We progress backwards, Lan! These damned humans! And now you! By your look you bring no good news!’

  The Odar snatched at this slight zephyr gratefully. ‘Some good news, Mighty One, and some bad. The good news ...’

  ‘Save it. Give me the gloom while I’m in the frame of mind for it. This accursed contrary planet. Despite rigorous hygiene our units continue to suffer sickness because of the infernal heat, yet we must make these forays to obtain provisions, on a planet where they have not yet learned how to utilise their snow and ice fields! And the humans keep on devising new and devious ways of cutting at us. What they call guerilla tactics. Sneaking sabotage. Stiff-necked defiance. Even self-destruction rather than sane surrender. And we thought this was a peaceful planet! What bad news can you have that can compare with that? Is it possible?’

  ‘It is possible. Mighty One,’ Cylo Lan said regretfully. ‘As you know we have now been in occupation for one orbital revolution, the human “year”, and we have now accumulated sufficient data on all relevant aspects of the situation to be able to cast an accurate estimate of future prospects.’

  ‘Not before time! Sweat and blisters, what kept you ?’

  ‘They are many races. Mighty Dar,’ Cylo Lan pointed out, properly respectful but determined to uphold his position as Chief Minister of the Machine, ‘and the planet has an amazing variety of climates and of topological and ecological features. The sheer quantity of data ...!’

  ‘Very well. Now it is all in and the Machine has spoken. What?’

  The Odar cautiously stiffened again into wooden impersonality. ‘Three times to eliminate possible error. Mighty Dar, and still the Machine says that, exclusive of some radical unknown, there is a small but significant bias in favour of the humans. Small. Significant. In the long run, they will defeat us.’

  All this considered, the Dar took it very well. For a full minute he roared, beat his desk with clenched fists, called down all the curses he could think of on the past, present and future of the obscene humans—and some of those curses were so new to the Odar that he had mental notes of them for future reference—but he made no attack on the handiest person present, the Odar himself, nor on any other Meden, either directly or by innuendo. All things considered, it was an example of masterly control. And then, feeling relieved, Onsep Ald began to think.

  ‘Small but significant, eh? A change in our weapons policy could alter it. We have been too soft so far, perhaps?’

  ‘Not according to the Machine, Mighty One. It has been computed.’ Cylo Lan spoke with due reverence, and Ald appreciated it but murmured, ‘Just a little escalation, perhaps?’

  He knew, as none better, that the Meden were equipped with far more powerful and dreadful weapons than they had so far used. It was understood that such large-scale destructive devices would be used only in emergency. Wasn’t this just such an emergency? The Odar sighed negatively.

  ‘We wish to live on the planet, Mighty One, not render it unfit for life. And the Machine now has sufficient data to predict that if we escalate, the humans will do likewise. Calculations indicate that the same idea is all that restrains them from escalation. They, too, have fearsome weapons they have not yet used. Our information also indicates that they, too, have computing and estimating devices similar to our Machine.’

  The Dar scowled, snorting out breath that billowed into vapour as it struck the room’s atmosphere. ‘So it is a stalemate with a small bias in their favour. In the long run, you said. Does the Machine say how long?’

  ‘The estimate is approximately one hundred orbital revolutions.’

  Now the Dar stared openly. ‘A hundred of their years? Does the Machine actually predict they can endure so long?’

  ‘Also that we will endure,’ the Odar sighed, ‘but no longer.’

  ‘Well,’ Onsep Ald grunted, ‘time enough for us to think out many new strategies.’ But the comment rang hollow. Onsep Ald was Dar, the Leader, but he was also Meden through and through and no Medenan would ever seriously question the findings of the Machine. A hundred years and failure at the end of it! A bleak prospect and one for which there was small precedent. The Meden technique was strictly formalised. The warrior class were specially selected and trained to go forth, find a suitable planet and subdue it to the point of compliance. Then the sleeping civilian classes were awakened to move into their comfortable niches as masters, with the warriors as token police, but actually in semi-retirement and at ease, to sire and train more warriors, while the civilians sired more of their kind and the whole process would eventually be repeated on some other planet. All strictly according to a master plan— and a struggle dragged out over a hundred years a
nd ending in defeat was no part of that plan at all. He would have to convene a Council of Ten, in itself a loss of face. But it was just barely possible that out of the Ten might come a wisp of an idea to tilt the balance of probabilities. Perhaps just one fast, smashing blow with a big weapon, to shake the opposition rigid? Ald came out of an unhappy reverie to see his second still standing there.

  ‘What? Ah yes, that good news you had. What?’

  ‘Not altogether good, Mighty One,’ the Odar was cautious, ‘but we have a signal from the perimeter south that there is one lone human, under a flag of truce, seeking to parley. To talk.’

  The Dar scowled as he revised his language equivalents. ‘A bid to make some kind of arrangement between us? Peace-talk?’

  ‘That’s what it sounds like.’

  ‘Sweat and blisters! We went to all the trouble to learn most of their languages especially so that we could convince them we have only one kind of deal in mind. Absolute and unconditional surrender. And now this! A crazy planet, Lan, and crazy people. Thank Meden we have the Machine to help us half-way to understanding them. Has this ... this parley offer been presented to the Machine, incidentally?’