New Writings in SF 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  Mainly herbivores, the big animals of the forest were not a great threat to man. Only one in their experience constituted an ever-present threat. Even though a well-placed dart could settle his hash, he was always ready to have a go. Pea-brained and vicious, a semi-reptile, twice a man’s height, blood-flecked eyes and permanently slavering mouth.

  One such had moved silently from the edge of the forest and was near enough to poke with a long stick when Zara sensed danger and turned to look. Kaalba had a moment to think that even here Tros had been a danger; because thoughts about him had inhibited the free play of instinct.

  He should have been more alert. His blow pipe was down below in the cave. He stretched out an arm to grab Zara and make a run for it when Tros got the adrenalin-loaded message.

  Not triggered for safety-seeking flight like its flesh and blood counterparts, Tros took two paces towards the towering monster and pointed at it with his left hand like a helpful guide.

  Silence erupted in a roar which was just as abruptly cut off when an invisible axe sliced through horn and bone and flesh and bisected its vibrating voice-box. It peeled apart in a welter of blubber and gut into two throbbing red mounds.

  Zara, poised to run, felt a deflating sense of anticlimax. Danger brushed aside with such contempt was humiliating. She said uncertainly, “How did you do that?”

  “I can send out a thread of light, which moves so fast that it can cut through anything”.”

  “Will it cut stone?”

  “Yes.”

  Tros pointed at a boulder and a line of chipping appeared on its face.

  Zara was treating him as a flesh and blood person. She said, “Well, thank you, anyway. That was a very dangerous beast.”

  Kaalba, with sensibility heightened by the crisis, saw that it had been killed by a potentially more dangerous one; but he kept the reflection in his own head. Even then the great golden eye-disks were turned speculatively on him as though something of this thought had been picked up.

  From that moment on, Tros and Zara were left alone much more and Kaalba sought seclusion to think this thing out. When present, he listened with growing alarm to the answers Zara was getting to her never-ending questions.

  Stored in Tros’s memory banks was all the unimaginable detail of a vanished culture, which diminished them indeed to the status of a poor, forked animal. Marvels too many to digest. Tros had no personal reticence and ran through his own statistics with the same objective thoroughness. He was the ultimate in androids, requiring only light to give him power. Virtually indestructible. More completely stocked with information than any one of the men who had created him.

  Certainly it would be valuable for the clan to have such a source of knowledge. Though much of it was as remote and extravagant as fable. Immense cities, space probes, power from plasma. Rationalizing, in the human mind’s constant effort to think well of itself, Kaalba thought, “But these clever men could only live and then die. Their wars were terrible. All that movement made no one happier, in itself.”

  When Tros regurgitated an account of a particularly long and hazardous expedition to a far planet, Kaalba asked, “What did they do when they got there, which they could not have done on this planet ?”

  For the first time Tros was disconcerted, and after a digestive pause said, “Repeat the question.”

  Repetition, however, was no help. Except that it proved that he had heard it correctly. Finally, he said, “I do not know,” with uneasy, avoiding motions of his head, and Kaalba scored himself a palpable hit.

  That night, when light level had fallen and Tros was lying in the cave like a stone figure on a catafalque, Kaalba took Zara outside.

  “This android is no good for our people. We must not take him back.”

  “You are jealous, because he knows more than you do. Of course we will take him back.”

  “It may be that in the time to come our people will also do the things he speaks about. But it is not good to know in advance. It must come slowly. Step by step. Indeed I doubt whether it is wise to go that way at all. What more did knowledge bring them than is possible for us? Knowledge in itself is nothing. It is the gathering of it which is important. Discovering is more important than discovery. Short cuts will decrease opportunity for our people to grow in stature and understanding to match the new developments. They would raise a structure that they could not inhabit. Besides, nothing will ever be more beautiful than you are. Being with you is potentially as great a pleasure as any reasonable man could want.”

  “Except for the last bit which is just flattery to make me agree, I don’t know what you are talking about. Of course we will take him back. We will be the most important people in the clan.”

  “In two days we must set off for the return. Then we will decide.”

  “I have decided now.”

  He let her have the last word. Determined in his own mind what had to be done. When Zara was turned aside to sleep, he looked across at the motionless metal figure. Very carefully, without disturbing her, he went to its side. Surely whoever had built this machine would have had means to control it?

  Silver light brightened the cave mouth. Soon it would be strong enough for him to inspect the android. He carried the shell to the entrance and emptied it, then he put it over the oval head and packed leaves round to make a light seal. Then he waited.

  Zara was first to be lit by the pale glare. Profile, shoulders, breasts and long smooth sides startling in silver. Then the cold perfect form of the machine. Shadows at this angle drew attention to surface detail which had been invisible in direct light. A dark line and a ring, grooves, chasing.

  Kaalba pressed with sensitive fingers. Not knowing precisely what he was looking for. Nor did he know how he had done it, when, for a hand’s breadth the metal skin slid aside. In the cavity so revealed, three small protruding pegs, hinged to move downwards. It had to be something to do with control. But clearly Tros could prevent anyone touching them when he was acting under power. Not so easily, though, if the cover remained off. He took some chips of stone and wedged them between the thicknesses of metal, so that the plate could not slide back. Then he removed the leaves and the cowl and went to bed.

  In the morning, he beat Zara to the question by asking Tros what was the purpose of the switches on his chest.

  Tros treated it as routine and went into a prepared statement. “This small console has three switches. The left one is a complete shut down of all circuits for adjustment or maintenance. The centre one cuts out my own local control and puts me under direction by voice. The third is a delayed action sequence.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It would be possible to use me in a terminal way to destroy.” Tros stopped and seemed reluctant to amplify the bulletin.

  The panel remained open. Kaalba felt that he was that much ahead of the game. He set himself to annoy Tros with silly questions which could have no answer. “How can a man pick two melons with one hand ? What will happen if a force which can not be stopped meets an object which can not be moved? How long is a piece of rope?” Childish puzzles.

  Tros showed impatience and began to make random avoiding movements to escape a situation in which he was uncomfortable. In one such, he pushed against Zara and she felt all the impersonal power of his metal frame. It would have been all the same if she had been standing at the edge of the cliff. She became thoughtful.

  Long neglect took its toll. Frustration tolerance was no longer adequate. Kaalba kept up the pressure. Tros’s “I do not know,” became an insane scream. Then there was frenzied movement as though a link had broken and he began to circle at random making jerky, uncoordinated arm movements.

  Zara was the nearer. As though reaching a decision, he seized her and put her over his shoulder and walked to the edge of the cliff, checked momentarily and then went surefooted along the path which led to the beach below.

  Contrite, Kaalba would have gone back on his decision if this would have made her
safe. Then he realized that even this he would not do. There was importance in this issue that transcended even the importance of Zara to him or even of him to himself. It was a moment of truth which conferred a kind of freedom.

  It did not mean, however, that he would not hazard himself to help her. Tros, looking neither left nor right, was marching on towards the sea at a pace twice that of a walking man. Kaalba struck a jog-trot which brought him a man’s length behind and hung on. If Tros felt threatened, he might use his annihilating light. There might only be one chance. He could not afford to fail.

  Zara had stopped struggling and lay inert over the smooth metal shoulder, arms hanging limp, hair straight down, black silk over silver steel. Kaalba pressed forward and shouted another question in the notional ear, “How long will it take ?”

  Tros hesitated in his stride, aware that the data was incomplete and forced by the logic of his construction to ask for more. Then as the head came round and the golden eye-disks identified the questioner, a circuit on the blink went into a flutter and threw him on to the short easy answer of violence. His free left arm came round in an arc with a line of sand kicking up as the laser beam sliced out.

  Leaving it to the last second and with a kind of exaltation in that he knew that he could win, Kaalba threw himself out of the path of the invisible axe and ran in to the right. As Tros attempted to twist his head off to follow the target, the man had gathered strength, in a total concentration of effort, and sprung to close the gap and throw the key in the open chest cavity.

  Tros stopped like a method actor in training and Zara slipped to the sand. Kaalba lifted her clear. Then without giving himself time for thought, he slipped the middle switch to local control and the right-hand one to delayed action sequence. Before putting Tros back into action he went over to Zara who was sitting up and watching him with enormous eyes.

  “Move back to the cliff before I do the next thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind, ‘Why?’ Do as I say.”

  “I will stay here with you.”

  “Do as I say.”

  For a long count, Zara looked at him and he met the golden-brown gaze without heat, almost without interest in his new freedom of spirit. She could only see determination.

  When she lowered her eyes and said in a small voice, “Very well,” he was touched to the heart.

  When she was starting up the path, he threw the last switch and as Tros straightened himself up, he said clearly, “You are to go straight ahead into the water. Go forward and do not stop until your destructor mechanism is activated.”

  Tros was erect and still and repeated the instruction. Then he began to walk.

  From the top of the cliff, they watched him wade out and finally disappear.

  Zara said, “Will the water cut off the light ?”

  “Not until it gets very deep.”

  A column of water rising from the sea and reaching far above the level of their heads made a period. There was a roar of following sound and a damp gust of flung spray.

  Zara was standing close and put her arm tentatively round Kaalba’s waist. Then her head was warm silk against his shoulder.

  He picked her up and began to carry her down the path to their cave.

  <>

  * * * *

  GIFTS OF THE GODS

  by Arthur Sellings

  It is a well-worn but apt cliche, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth”, but in this instance Framley New Town was being used as a type of Trojan Horse—and the inhabitants were in for something of a shock

  * * * *

  Bryan Dudley went on sipping his coffee and scanning the morning paper, only a cell or two of his subconscious having registered the fact that his wife had drawn back the curtains and spoken.

  “I tell you, there’s something in the garden.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The garden she called it! They were renting the house monthly—the latest of a long line, by the look of the place. It had the hostile impersonal air of rented houses—paintwork that shade of stone that nobody surely picks for himself to live with, wallpaper of the desperate pattern one sees only in end-of-season sale windows. The garden was a straggle of plots where a succession of tenants had salved their consciences by doing something anyway. Gwen was always hailing, with the ecstasy of the new exurbanite, the appearance of some flower or another among the weeds, some unusual bird that was always gone when he looked.

  He found himself gaping at the coffeepot. He blinked up. Gwen was holding the crumpled newspaper in front of her.

  “I’m sorry, dear. What is it—that yellow wagtail again?”

  She shook her head slowly, glowering.

  There was nothing else for it. He got up from the table and peered out of the window. Something gleamed in the morning sunlight.

  “I’ll see what it is,” he said.

  He came back with his arms full. He inclined them over the tea trolley. A small cascade of metal objects rattled on to it. One rolled over the edge, but he caught it before it reached the floor, feeling a certain pride in his reflexes. He landed it to his wife.

  Gwen turned it over in her palm. It was about nine inches long, a delicately fluted piece of metal, rather like a skittle. It had a lustrous, anodised kind of finish. But this was silkier than any anodised household article she had known. The surface seemed to glow with a soft golden light, as if illuminated from within. But it couldn’t be, surely; it was opaque metal. The silky touch of it in her hands was suddenly eerie, like the flesh-like, too human, feel that some dolls have. She thrust it back at her husband, shivering slightly and then laughing nervously at the absurdity of her own disquiet.

  Bryan looked at her.

  “What are they?” she asked, noticing with a pang of awareness that he too got rid of it quickly, putting it down with the others.

  “Search me.”

  “But who could have put them there ? And why?”

  He shrugged. “Whoever it was must have been a bit of a neurotic. You know, the kind that has to have everything dead straight and in order. They were standing on end—the nine of them—in a neat diamond.”

  “It must be some kind of a joke.”

  “Joke ? A joke has to have a point. This seems completely pointless.” He picked up one of the objects again. “Fascinating feel, though. And light. Maybe it’s hollow.” He held it up, turning it in his hands.

  “Perhaps it unscrews?”

  ‘The fluting, you mean?” He tried to turn one end against the other, first anticlockwise, then clockwise. But nothing happened, and when he tried harder his hands only slid over the slick surface. “No, there’d have to be some kind of a join that you could see. Unless ...”

  “Unless?”

  “Well, there are surfaces so smooth they join almost invisibly. And grip. Pete showed me a couple of blocks like that once. That’s it! Pete’s the boy for this. I’ll take one in to him.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be late if I don’t hurry.”

  “I------”

  “Yes, dear ?” he asked impatiently, grabbing for his briefcase.

  She fished out an empty carton from a cupboard. “Take them all in to Pete, will you ?”

  He looked at her, then smiled. “All right, sweetie.”

  * * * *

  He left the carton in his car, wrapped one of the things in a Kleenex and took it with him to his office in Accounts. As soon as he had dealt with the morning mail he went down to the lab block.

  The red light was on above the door, and through the dark-shielded window Bryan could see a crouched masked figure, faintly illumined by what looked like a dull mauve acorn of light. He knocked, screwed up his eyes tight and went in. The air crackled and reeked with metal fumes.

  “That you, Pete?” he called out. “Am I interrupting anything ?”

  The crackling died, the intense light stopped beating on his eyelids. He opened them.

  “Hy, Dudders,” said Pete, lowering his mask. Bryan wi
nced. “Are we spending too much money again?”

  It was all a ritual. Bryan gave response 2 (c).

  “What’s money ? We make it, you burn it.”

  Pete put his mask down on the benchtop. “Division of labour, lad. What can I help doing for you?”

  Bryan held the thing out to him. Pete unwrapped it and held it up.

  “What’s this a prototype of?” he asked after a moment’s perusal.