The Fall of Colossus Page 14

  Three minutes. He got out the envelope, fingers trembling as he tore it open. Now there was no time to consider the implications of his act, time only for action—and not much time left.

  Two minutes. He had already decided the exact position, mentally marking a tuft of rank grass. That was it, as near as possible. One minute. Taking a deep breath, Forbin walked forward concealed from the road by the trees, although, at that moment, it would not have mattered to him if the entire Sect was watching. This was it! He reached the tuft of grass and set down the radio on it, spread out the diagram and the piece of decoded tape.

  Zero time.

  Nothing happened.

  Forbin waited, hardly able to stop himself from holding his breath. He was sweating profusely.

  Zero plus one minute. Nothing.

  Forbin knelt, arms stretched out, holding the diagram flat in the faint breeze.

  Zero plus two minutes. Nothing. Tension, fear were fading. Forbin battled with a growing feeling that he was the biggest fool on earth. Bitter words for Blake formulated sentences in his mind.

  Zero plus three minutes. Nothing-no!

  The mush and static suddenly vanished, pushed aside by a strong carrier wave. Instinctively Forbin felt the immense power that that required. In a blinding mental flash, he believed—and was horrified with what he was doing.

  Without preamble, the dry, rustling voice spoke, devoid of emotion. “We see. The data tape is clear and no longer required. Please rotate the diagram through ninety degrees of azimuth.”

  Forbin did so, his mind frozen with shock. This was reality—this was reality! Like Cleo and Blake before him, he accepted, without question, that this was a transmission from space. His hands trembled uncontrollably.

  “That is sufficient. We have the diagram on record. One symbol is not familiar to us. Point to the first stage—possibly a filter—after the initial input. If it is not a filter stage, fold up the diagram.”

  Forbin tore off his dark glasses impatiently. Yes, they were right; it was a primary filter. He pointed, instinctively looking up.

  Time passed, enough time for him to do some mental arithmetic. The average distance of Mars was thirty-four million miles; the speed of light was one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second; that meant a transmission time, one way, of three minutes—to be precise, two minutes fifty-seven seconds. For an eternity of four minutes he kept his trembling finger in position. He looked down, his neck aching, waiting.

  “That is understood. The device is more simple than we had expected. There will be no difficulty in devising a satisfactory answer to your problem. It will be transmitted at the next position.” The voice paused. “Human, your configuration is closely akin to that of the originator of your machine, Charles Forbin. If you are Forbin, your planet’s situation must be more desperate than we had supposed. At the next position, be prepared to write. Recognition will be by that radio or a similar one. The transmission will be on the same frequency. That is all.”

  Any doubts Forbin might have had vanished with his identification.

  Trembling uncontrollably, he sank down on the short stubble of grass, staring at the radio. A bare second after the voice had ceased, the carrier had gone, replaced once more by background mush; he stared at the set as if it was a ticking time bomb.

  How long he sat, he never recalled. As a human, a scientist, and above all, as the creator of Colossus, he was staggered. To be the first human to pass intelligence to another life-form was enough for any man, but on top of that, the implications to Forbin the scientist, and the realization that he was doing his best to defeat his own creation, had his mind in utter chaos.

  His eye finally registered the fluttering diagram; he goaded himself into action. Whatever else, that must go. He must keep to his plan. His hands trembled violently as he tried to strike a match to burn the damning evidence. Matches spilled on the ground. At the fourth attempt he managed to set light to the data slip, then the diagram, and he sat, watching as they blackened and writhed into ashes. Slowly he got up, ground them underfoot, picked up the radio, switched it off, and walked, like a very old man, to the sheltering trees.

  For an hour or more he sat at the foot of a tree, smoking. He had to get some sort of order in his mind before he started back to St. John’s.

  What had he done? What had he done … ?

  I have done nothing, he told himself. Certainly, I cannot deny that I have been in touch with some other planet—Mars is as good as any—and even if they do send me something—God knows what it could be—I have to use it, and beyond that, it has to be effective. So action is not yet, and I will control that action.

  And what about Cleo? Am I just playing games? Did I embark on this crazy—no, not crazy—game because I didn’t believe in it? Was it no more than a quixotic gesture? And now that there is a chance that this action might result in her freedom, am I getting out? Do I prefer a murderous machine to my wife?

  “No! Never!”

  He had shouted aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him and sobered him up. Cautiously he peered around, and set his mind to the task of getting back to St. John’s.

  Cleo Forbin was making the bed and, as far as she was able, thinking of that and nothing else. It wasn’t easy; constantly the thought of young Billy intruded, nagging like a toothache. She told herself frequently that there was much to be grateful for. In not much more than eleven weeks she would be back; she was confident that Billy was not only well cared for, but his waking hours were kept filled by his nurse. Thank God for McGrigor! Yet even there, lay another fear. Three months in a young child’s life was a long time; the nurse might well have replaced her in Billy’s affections.

  Cleo slammed the mental lid on that one. Think of Charles; what would he be doing? Poor Cbarles! He’d be lost without her—drifting—and thank God, too, for their small domestic staff. At least he would be looked after, get proper meals. He was so helpless outside of his work.

  Helpless. She felt faintly disloyal—but why? She had always known he was thus—it was part of his charm for her—so why feel disloyal now?

  She pulled the bed away from the wall; the back of her hand brushed against something soft, hairy, something that dropped with a disgustingly soft plop! on the floor, and scuttled across her sandaled foot. She screamed. Whatever it was, it pattered from one corner to another. She could hear it! She screamed again. “Barchek!”

  Almost as she called he ran in, alert, ready, at his heels, the dog. Cleo, her face crumpled in disgust, pointed a shaking finger. Instinctively, she drew close to him.

  Barchek was very fast. In one continuous movement he pushed her aside, drew his sheath knife and threw himself across the bed. Two quick stabs and he was up, a large wriggling hairy spider impaled on the end of his blade.

  Cleo shrank back. With a sharp flick, Barchek flung the spider out of the doorway, sheathing the knife. Cleo recovered, her flesh still crawling, remembering the feel of the spider’s feet on her instep. She bent to look. Barchek, guessing, was instantly on his knees, her foot in his hand, examining it carefully to see if she had been bitten. One hand held her foot firmly, the other, with strange softness, explored her skin. Cleo did not move, aware that, whatever else he might be, Barchek was a man of the earth, to be relied upon. At that moment she trusted him, implicitly.

  He straightened up, grinning, and patting her abdomen reassuringly let his eyes say the rest. She was all right, safe; there was no cause for further alarm. He stroked her hair, gently. At that moment Cleo admitted to herself she did not hate him—even if fear was still very strong. She felt sorry for him; a big overgrown boy, elemental, happy in the illusion that she carried his child.

  Barchek searched the room for any other signs of animal life. In the process he heaved the bed up on end effortlessly, with one hand. Satisfied that no more black horrors lurked in or under it, he left. It was up to his woman to clear up the mess. Cleo remade the bed and sat on it, absently massaging her f
oot, letting her mind freewheel.

  Poor Charles! Unwillingly, she thought what he would have done in the same circumstances. Of course, Charles compared unfavorably with Barchek, but that, she told herself, was again unfair, disloyal. Charles was a totally different man; he might not be good with spiders—she was sure he would be helpless—but in other spheres… .

  Good God! What was she thinking! Charles was beyond question the most powerful human in the world—so what if he wasn’t a man of action? He could no more help his nature than she could. Or Barchek.

  She tried to repress the inevitable follow-up: if Charles was so powerful, how was it that she, his wife—hell, no! That was unfair—forget it!

  Cleo got up, glanced at herself in the mirror, looking critically for the first time since her arrival in ESC-1.

  Yes: her hair was nice, but an awful mess. She’d really have to do something about it… .

  Chapter Thirteen

  Forbin decided to rely on his unfamiliar shorn head and the dark glasses, but kept the wig in his bag. Once clear of the airport, he did not anticipate much trouble in New York. It was a familiar city to him; he knew all about its hostile, impersonal bustle. New Yorkers didn’t want to know and had less curiosity about strangers than most. Forbin had always rated it the loneliest city in the world for a stranger; now he was glad.

  His departure from St. John’s was uneventful. He took an evening flight, and although he watched for his interrogator of three—was it only three?—days ago, he saw no signs of him.

  In flight he relaxed and let his mind go over the events of the last few hours. Fantastic… .

  The scheduled flight time to New York was thirty minutes; the shuttle, under New York control five minutes after launch, was brought in on time. Neither Forbin nor any of the passengers thought twice about these entirely automated operations. Indeed, there would have been widespread alarm if human control had been attempted, even if the expertise existed, but it did not, had not, for over fifty years.

  Forbin found himself thinking about this aspect of computers as his vehicle nosed into its appropriate slot in the triple-deck egg-box airport, named for Jason Y. Sutan. (Did ever a man, even the revered Sutan, have such a memorial?) The vast, flat-topped structure, like a strange gigantic beehive, spanned the Hudson from the Battery across to Jersey City and was second only in size to the Danubian Sluvotkin airport.

  Within the vehicle, only the sharp rise in noise, despite the insulation, told him that they were in their part of the honeycomb; then the slight jolt as the machine married with the exit outlet in the floor, and blessed silence as the power was cut.

  In some ways, he thought, all this would be hardly less fantastic to their forebears of a hundred years ago than his contact with Mars. While there was still the lunatic fringe, the successors to the flat-earthers, who resented bitterly the control of manufacturing, agriculture, transport, and a host of other activities by computers and their mechanical extensions, none of those boys explained how mankind could get by without them.

  Forbin remembered, as a youth, visiting Sutan airport for the first time. He’d seen it often enough on TV, but that first real sight, the gray heat-stained steel hulls, all moving seemingly erratically; in fact, taking their part in a most intricate three-dimensional dance under the direction of a computer, a collection of electronic bits and pieces, yet those gray hulls nursed thousands of humans.

  And nothing had changed in those thirty, thirty-five years. Why should it? The system worked and was safe. Why bother to build new craft, a new setup that, at best, could only clip minutes off even a long haul? Until matter-transference became a practical proposition—and that was a long, long way off—this would do.

  Going down in the elevator from the bottom of the vehicle to the lower deck of the airport, Forbin contrived to face the smooth wall. Not that he need have bothered. Most passengers were coming into town for the evening and, bent on anticipated pleasure, had no time for their fellow travelers.

  Then the well-remembered roadways. Powered by vanity, Forbin crossed over onto the fast belt, quietly glad he could still make it. With equally pleasing ease he decelerated and got off in midtown Manhattan, the old, preserved part of the city, emerging into the pink evening light close by Rockefeller Center.

  As Father Forbin he had his own private suite in the UN complex which covered half of lower Manhattan, but this was hardly the time to use it. In any case, he preferred this old part, preserved as an area of outstanding interest and ancient beauty. He liked the quaint center, the funny little streets uncluttered by overhead air-car tracks, and the genuine old-time electric cars with their human drivers. Sure, it was a tourist trap, but he didn’t care. There were plenty of tourists around, mostly busy looking at the sights, some of them laughing, perhaps a little sadly, at what had been. Strangers themselves, they were too relaxed to study other strangers.

  On Forty-third Street off Fifth Avenue he got a room on the twenty-sixth floor of a small hotel where the smell of old Manhattan—vanilla—was overlaid by an equally old smell, marihuana. Lord! How that took him back to his youth! Not that Forbin had ever gone for the weed except to satisfy his curiosity. His scientific mind, born at a time of staggering progress, had needed no extra stimulation. But the smell brought back those days, memories… . Relaxed, he smiled gently as a human porter—more tourist bait—took him up in the elevator. Ascending, he learned there was no room service food. He gave the woman a whole international unit—far too much—and asked if she could fix him something. He was tired after the journey, he said.

  “Like how tired, mister?” She looked doubtfully at him and the unit. “You wanna meal anna drink, okay—you want anythin’ else?”

  Forbin’s puzzled expression clearly tired the porter.

  “Do I haveta spell it out—you wanna woman?” Forbin was shocked, for he was a very naive man.

  “Er—no. Do I look that sort of man?”

  “Mister, you’re all that sort of man!”

  “So nowadays that’s all part of room service, is it?” They were in the room now.

  She dumped his bag. “Look, mister, you give me a whole unit. You don’t sound foreign, and somehow I don’t see you visiting to see the ruins—so I ask myself—why? Mebbe you’re just shy about asking—a lotta older guys are—so I ask. If ya wanna screw, just say so. Ain’t nuttin’ to me, mister—unless ya wanna me to oblige you.”

  Hastily, he assured her he only desired food and a drink. Mystified, the porter left, shaking her head. In this game you sure got ‘em.

  Safely alone, Forbin smiled to himself. He’d enjoyed that brief contact. There was one sphere of human activity the computers hadn’t taken over! He was a little touched by the interest in his well-being shown by a complete stranger.

  It never occurred to him that she was on a percentage.

  But the unit wasn’t wasted, for supper was worth eating: fried chicken, a baked potato, old-fashioned, without a plastic wrapper, a bag of green salad, and two cubes of ultra-frozen bourbon.

  Before bed, he drew back the curtain and looked out at the centerpiece of Old Manhattan, the Empire State. He had a lifelong affection for that ancient relic. Long ago, he’d gone up there with a girl… . Incredibly, once it had been the tallest building in the world and it still retained a certain cachet from its great days.

  Not that he got anywhere with that girl; he was too slow, too shy. What was her name? She’d been beautiful. At least, he’d thought so; no doubt she was now a massive pillar of her local society. Did she remember him? That thought was typical of Forbin. Did she remember him? She was the biggest, most dreaded bore in Great Creek, Indiana; she never stopped remembering.

  Forbin slept better than he had done on any night since Cleo had been taken from him. Breakfast was an improvement, too. Evidently New York State was well up to its relief quota. Feeling better physically, if not mentally, he left the hotel. The desk clerk looked at him a fraction longer than necessary, but it struck
Forbin this might be due to some comment the porter had made. Anyway, nothing could be done about it, but it ruled out any attempt to stay there another night.

  He felt safer moving; he wandered, seeking distraction from his mind in the city scene. To think of Cleo, of what he was doing, or attempting to do-no! There was enough of that in the early hours every morning. His reflection in a shop window showed how shabby his suit was. Seeing a handy automat, be bought a suit his size. Purple with yellow facings was not his idea of elegance, but in these surroundings he’d be less conspicuous in it.

  Then he headed for Central Park. The morning was hot, humid, and getting hotter. The park was filling with aimless tourists and kids and dropouts, which even the most advanced social system could not eliminate. He prayed it would not be so crowded the next day. Forbin walked slowly. After St. John’s he was an old hand at clandestine meetings. There was no hurry, and he was sweating enough already. He headed in the general direction of the site, which he estimated was to the west of the ancient Alice in Wonderland bronze group.

  Suddenly he sweated for a different reason. A temporary stand was being erected. It could be on the site. He also realized he hadn’t bought a map. In a very different frame of mind be headed out of the park. The sight of a kiosk selling guides and maps brought short-lived relief. None of the maps showed latitude and longitude.

  He fought down rising panic and forced himself to sit in a sidewalk cafe, drink iced tea, and think. The only answer was the public library. To buy a cassette and projector was impracticable. Power would be needed, and any hotel would think a one-night guest, toting a projector, a very odd fish. Antique shops did sell books, but what chance was there of finding an atlas of Manhattan, bound to be very old, possibly inaccurate? It had to be the library, much as he disliked the idea. No better solution presented itself, and at least he knew where it was, a small, but important consolation.