The Killer Thing Read online

  Elt al Trin paused and held up a transparent container in which there were three ashtris, no larger than fleas. There was a murmur throughout the chamber. He replaced the container on the table before him. “I say to you, gentlemen, we have nothing to fight with but our numbers. Today we are forty thousand fighting men, our enemy has ten thousand stationed on Tensor. Tomorrow he will have hundreds of thousands, and then it will be time to sit waiting for the intercession of the mythical Outsiders.” There was scattered clicking of the audience’s tongues against their teeth, and he held up his hand for quiet. “We don’t even know that the Outsiders exist! What evidence have we that there are such people? A rumour from a dying man, a prisoner from Mellic who lived in a ship’s storeroom and was burned by radiation for three weeks. Who can say how much of his tale was born of sickness? How firmly entrenched will the World Group powers be before this mythical race appears from nowhere in order to aid a people, of whom it has never even heard? Might we not better go back to the anthropological gods of our fathers and ask for their intercession? Might not the one be as helpful to us in our great need as the other?”

  Fedo waited until there was again silence in the chamber before he made his final rebuttal. “My friends, what are numbers against the rain? Can numbers alone turn back the fires, the gases, the bombs? Can numbers withstand the deadly beams that dissolve and turn to air the targets they seek? We know about the camps where the soldiers live, the areas they have cleared about them; we know about the beams they can use to destroy anything that moves within those cleared areas, the gas clouds that bring death with even greater speed. How can we overcome them if we cannot even approach them? Those who go into our cities and towns? Yes, we can murder them, a handful, enough to draw the wrath of the main body, that is all. Then what? I can tell you: destruction. Complete and utter destruction.”

  “We don’t know that they won’t visit that kind of complete destruction on us at any time as matters now stand!”

  “But we do know that they haven’t done so yet.”

  “They are waiting for their reinforcements! We intercepted their message to that effect. One month. That’s how much time we have! One month!”

  Trol raised his hand for the debate to be ended. Each side had had its three hours; all had been said that could alter the situation, tilt it towards either position. Now it would rest with him and his council, but mainly with him. He inclined his head towards the council room, and the other members arose heavily and started to leave the large chamber. Trol was handed a message which he read. He raised his hand for attention.

  “A metal robot has emerged from the ship that landed,” he said. “The ship is radioactive and cannot be approached. The robot is less radioactive. It has made no overture of any sort towards the observers, although they are positive that they are well within its range. They await instructions.”

  “I’ll go immediately,” Luo umDis cried, jumping to his feet. “And Das, and Lewi…”

  Trol nodded. “I command you, Luo, to take charge of the matter, to report back to me by radio of your findings. Take as many of the scientists as you deem necessary. Be wary of a possible trick…”

  Luo bowed, his sharp blue eyes blazing with excitement and hope. A robot… If he could programme it to serve them… If it were more than the simple mobile tool that he knew the World Group possessed…

  A group of twelve men travelled fast through the thick forests as silently as the animals that watched their progress. The people of Tensor had learned to live with their stretches of forests, not sacrificing them when technology began rising to ascendancy. The forests were still honoured and loved for themselves; the people still preferred them to the cities they dwelled in and the rare crime against nature itself was as severely punished as the still rarer crime against man. The patrols met the group as it neared the area where the robot was standing.

  “It left the ship and since then has not moved,” the patrol scout said, motioning Luo to advance quietly. They stayed behind trees and looked out at the robot gleaming red and gold as it reflected the lengthening rays of the setting sun.

  “Have you tried to contact it at all?”

  The scout shook his head, his gaze intent on the robot.

  It waited motionlessly. It had the need of fuel, and had not been taught how to obtain it. No one was threatening it. It waited. If no one had approached it at that point it would have waited until time and change wore away its covering, eroded its metals and crystals and diluted its chemicals until they were inert traces only. It recorded the voices that whispered away to its left, but it didn’t turn its dome to gather other sensory data concerning them. The words it was recording were meaningless. It scanned, then activated the circuit that was programmed for translating.

  “Don’t guess we have much that could hurt it down here. We could call for demo charges.”

  “No! Whatever you do you must not damage it until we have a chance to examine it.”

  At the sentry’s voice a second circuit had been activated, the circuit that led to defensive measures. A slit appeared in the dome and infra-red sensors sought out the men speaking, caught them and fastened on them. The circuit that would activate the laser pulsed steadily, but did not close the connection that meant fire. The feedback mechanism said that no attack was forthcoming after all. It waited, watchful and ready to defend itself.

  “We’ll have to get it back to headquarters. We can’t leave it out here. It might be seen and destroyed by the WG planes…”

  It scanned. It had no fuel for flight, and didn’t know how to refuel. It could wait for an attack and meet it when it came, or it could allow itself to be moved out of the range of danger. It had experience with each of the alternatives; it had waited patiently, it had fled, it had attacked: each had led to satisfaction. The occasions it had allowed itself to be moved, it had learned more about itself, how better to function. It would be moved again. It rolled slowly towards the man, its wheels digging in slightly on the soft ground. It stopped and lowered treads, and its progress was faster. Luo watched it approach with awe, and a touch of fear.

  Thirteen

  The tarom tree of Tensor had peculiar properties, such that when cut the wood was pliant, moulded easily, and could be twisted into shapes for furniture, ornaments, and machine parts with no tools other than those used for precision measurements. The wood dried slowly, but if allowed to dry in controlled temperatures ranging from 1°C. to 16°C, with humidity of no more than ten per cent, after a period of six months, World Group time, the finished product had the hardness of 8 on the Mohr scale. Only corundum and diamonds were harder of all the materials found in nature. The northern varieties of the wood dried with a deep, mahogany red colour, while those from southern parts lightened to a pale gold with age. Depending on the cut there were rings or swirls, or geometric patterns in the grain. Veneers from it could be cut one thousandth of an inch thick, be more durable than plastic, lighter than plastic, and far lovelier than plastic.

  The commander of Outpost Number Nine, stationed on Tensor, Sector Three, had orders not to destroy a single tree. His orders also read that he was to seek out the rebel band known to be hiding in the mountains that divided the land mass almost exactly in half, seek them out and either capture or kill the members. Stationed in Outpost Number Nine were four hundred and fifty men, roughly twenty per cent of them having had no taste of battle before except for the brief encounters on set-ups like Tarbo. Another ten per cent were non-combatants, medics, scientists, clerks, all the dead weight the army needed and begrudged space to maintain. The commander suspected that the rebels had at least one thousand men at their immediate disposal, with many, many more thousands simply waiting for a signal to join them. He hoped they would procrastinate until the relief ship arrived with the machinery to install the force screen for the outpost. Under the orders to preserve the trees he could not burn the rebels out of the surrounding hills and forests, and without the screen in place over the camp, he co
uld not use gas without endangering his own men. Taking hostages in the towns and villages had proved to be ineffective. The hostages managed to kill themselves with ease; they were like animals, once deciding to discontinue living, they simply died. In the beginning of the campaign they had burned a dozen cities and towns to the ground, with the inhabitants in them, but still the rebel ranks swelled; still men disappeared from their homes overnight, melting into the woods without a trace. The commander thought bitterly of the weapons at his disposal: lasers, fire bombs, gases, hydrogen fusion bombs, BW agents. None of them could be used, each one posed a threat to the trees, or to his own men. But after the screens were in place… He had a chart prepared already, and a spraying programme ready to initiate: first the mountainous areas where he knew the rebel bands had massed, then the surrounding countryside, so that no more could escape the cities to join them, and finally the towns and cities themselves, but lightly. After all he didn’t want to commit genocide, just kill enough to demonstrate the power of the World Group forces, and enforce the cooperation of the people.

  Until the ships arrived with the machinery all he could do was wait.

  In the mountain cave the robot also waited. Without a first order purpose it could do nothing but wait, and record. It had time enough.

  Trol stared at it from the entrance to the chamber. At Trol’s side was Luo. “Haven’t you been able to learn anything from it yet?” Trol asked. The robot had been standing just so for six days.

  “Oh, I’ve learned much from it… Entirely hand-made, so we can be assured that this isn’t the forerunner of the next wave of fighters to be sent out by the World Group. This must be a prototype that someone let get away. It must have been en route to one of the other worlds, catastrophe of some sort in the ship, no survivors, and the ship set to land on the first planet it got within range of. It seems harmless enough, takes verbal instruction, probably only in WG language. Has versatility enough to replace men on the field of battle, probably. Seems to have no defensive measures built in however, which is strange. Of course the laser could be used as an interceptor, destroy bombs and such before they hit even, but that leaves it with no offensive weapons…”

  Trol shrugged impatiently. “Can you programme it so that we can use it to get inside the WG camp? We need supplies, fuel for the aircraft, ammo, medical supplies. We have to break into this one if we want to continue the fight. It is the least protected of all their camps.”

  “I think we can use it,” Luo said. “We’ll have to take it with us in any event if we want to use the laser… I was not able to dismantle any of it without risking its destruction. That should come as a surprise to the WG men, our attacking with a laser. Maybe even enough of a surprise to permit us to gain entry before they recover…”

  “I have the interpreter,” Trol said. “He arrived minutes ago. As soon as he eats and rests, I’ll send him to you. Try the robot with WG languages. There has to be a way of controlling it. They wouldn’t have had it if they couldn’t control it.”

  Luo nodded absently as Trol left him. Luo knew nothing about chemical storage, but he did understand transistors, monolithic crystals, the electronic relays that he had exposed in the robot’s massive barrel chest. He knew how to add to the store of knowledge already possessed by the metal thing. He reprogrammed it to increase its speed, so that the robot could keep up with the few motored vehicles the rebels already had. Luo wondered where the energy was going when it stood so quietly, and decided it had been programmed to scan and record perpetually.

  When the interpreter arrived, Luo prepared a test of the laser. He placed a stone target fifty yards down a dead end passage inside the cave and directed the interpreter to tell the robot to burn it. Nothing happened.

  It scanned and found no meaning for burn. It waited.

  “Well,” Luo said dispiritedly, “I guess they built it without having a chance to programme it yet.”

  “Can’t you teach it?”

  “In time. God only knows how much time it would take. Meanwhile their reinforcements will arrive and they will destroy this base, and the robot along with it…

  It scanned. Destroy. The circuit had activated, the laser pulsed with energy, but the feedback restrained it, and the scanning increased in intensity.

  “Why haven’t they burned us out already? They could burn the whole mountain if they wanted to. They’ve got the laser for it, and the fire bombs… Whatever it would take…”

  Burn… destroy. The disequilibrium it experienced supplied the connection, and the laser turned on, touched the rock at the end of the passage and vaporised it. The laser went off. It waited.

  “My God!” the interpreter whispered. “What happened? Why did it do that?”

  Luo put aside his fear. Brusquely he said, “Delayed response. I don’t know why. At least we know now that it does take verbal orders. Maybe we still can get that outpost before the reinforcements get here and get us.”

  Its ability to abstract was growing. It understood “get us” as meaning destroy us. It was part of “us”. When the interpreter ordered it to come, it moved along the passages on its wheels, switching to the treads outside on the rocky ground. The next test of the laser demonstrated that it had an effective range of two miles.

  They worked feverishly with it after that, a team busy with it around the clock, testing its abilities, adding new ones. It was taught to hurl bombs, and had an effective range of over a mile; it was taught to use the laser as an interceptor, knocking stones from the sky effortlessly, even when they rained from twenty hands simultaneously. None of them touched it.

  And when they were not actively teaching it, it continued to learn, recording, tracking, assimilating constantly. The supply of data in the chemical units grew, and as cross references became more and more complex, circuits were reassigned to relieve some of the load. One entire circuit was reserved for data that thus far served no useful purpose in the second order purpose of maintaining self. This circuit stored bits of poetry, bird songs, the soft voices of men singing of loneliness, data about light reflections and sunsets, data about growing things, the spiral of unfolding flowers, unfurling leaves, mosses heavy and velvety with water glistening on them. They continued to direct it in World Group English, but everything said within its audio range was recorded to be transferred later to the chemical units. It learned of war and killing, and all the various names that try to hide the fact of killing. It learned that the enemy must be destroyed, subdued, captured, countered; all these things to it meant the enemy must be killed. It learned that in order to continue to live, one first must kill the enemy, and for the first time it had a glimmering of a first order purpose.

  For two days the men made their way from the cavern, through the forests, to take up their positions grouped about the compound of the WG forces. The relief ship had been spotted in space, a message had been smuggled from the port to the rebel bands. The relief ship would land in six days. The battle must take place before it got within firing range. The third day the motored contingent left the cave, and rolling along with it was the robot. It understood this part. In the camp was the fuel it needed for the spaceship. In the camp was the enemy that must be killed before the enemy destroyed it.

  Through the interpreter it was given its orders: the weapons must be destroyed; the shells must not be allowed to hit the men; the lasers they would start to use must be destroyed at the origin…

  The rebels numbered seven hundred men; inside the compound there were four hundred fighting men. The commander learned of the assault only when the air was thick with shells and grenades. The rebels had no modern weapons, only those things they had been able to forge in the two years since the arrival of the WG forces. The commander felt more irritation at the attack than unease. He ordered full return of the fire, responding with weapons of superior fire power, but not different in kind. He also ordered immediate air cover and bombings if they should prove necessary. The rebels were still miles away in the forests,
hiding behind the virtually impenetrable walls of the trees. The defence of the compound was under the control of a master computer that directed laser fire to intercept the incoming bombs, so actually the compound was in no danger. However, he knew he would have to hold a full inquiry about the attack, determine how the rebels had got within range without detection, where they had got their weapons, et cetera. It was a bloody bore.

  He paused to watch the aeroplanes leaping in a vertical ascent into the cobalt sky, and there, one by one, vanishing in a puff of smoke and steam. Two of them were gone before he could bring himself to admit what he was seeing, and by then it was too late. If he had put through a message for help in the first three minutes of the attack, the rebels might have been routed, if not by his troops, then by arriving reinforcements, but he had not put through such a call. He had been contemptuous of the weapons and the ability of the rebels to use them. He had been unsuspecting about the laser they had managed to get, and he never would have been able to admit belief in their ability to use a laser correctly. In all instances he had judged wrongly.

  The rebels had started to fire before they were in range so that the robot would be able to track the return fire and destroy the weapons firing on them. Within the robot the computer worked, tracking, and the laser turned to the source of the shells, burned through the compound walls, through buildings, men, vehicles, to the guns themselves to play over them, turning them red, then white, then leaving nothing at all. The WG computer had been programmed to intercept only; it did not search out the other laser, but merely touched shell after shell in the air. Before the commander could get the computer director on the screen of his communications unit, the WG computer was touched by the red light, and where it had been a cloud of steam arose. The red light touched other pieces of equipment and there were no more communications facilities in the base. The infra-red of the robot found men, who were the enemy, and the men ceased to exist. By the time Trol caught up with it, along with Luo and the interpreter, less than fifty men remained in the WG base. The robot stopped firing at a command from Luo. It waited.