Part 18 (1/2)

I had seen Decons go to work before; they're smart, efficient, and quick. Each one has a small chamber inside it, radiation s.h.i.+elded to carry humans out of contaminated areas. They're small and crowded, but I didn't mind. It was better than conking out from a psychosomatic heart ailment when the therapists started to fiddle with me.

I smelled something sweetish then, and I realized I was getting a dose of gas. I went by-by.

When I woke up again, I was sick. I'd been hit with a stun beam yesterday and ga.s.sed today. I felt as though I was wasting all my life sleeping. I could still smell the gas.

No. It wasn't gas. The odor was definitely different. I. turned my head and looked around. I was in the lounge of Senator Anthony Rowley's Lodge. On the floor. And next to me was Senator Anthony Rowley.

I crawled away from him, and then I was really sick.

I managed to get to the bathroom. It was a good twenty minutes before I worked up nerve enough to come out again. Rowley had moved, all right. He had pulled himself all of six feet from the spot where I had shot him.

My hunch had been right.

The senator's dead hand was still holding down the programming b.u.t.ton on the control panel he had dragged himself to. The robot had gone on protecting the senator because it thought-as it was supposed to-that the senator was still alive as long as he was holding the ORDERS circuit open.

I leaned over and spoke into the microphone. ”I will take a flitter from the roof. I want guidance and protection from here to the city. There, I will take over manual control. When I do, you will immediately pull all dampers on your generator.

”Recheck.”

The robot dutifully repeated the orders.

After that, everything was simple. I took the flitter to the rendezvous spot, was picked up, and, twenty minutes after I left the Lodge, I was in the Director's office.

He kicked in the hypnoes, and when I came out of it, my arm was strapped down while a surgeon took out the Gifford ID plate.

The Director of the FBI looked at me, grinning. ”You took your time, son.”

”What's the news?”

His grin widened. ”You played hob with everything. The Lodge held off all investigation forces for thirty-odd hours after reporting Rowley's death. The Sector Police couldn't come anywhere near it.

”Meanwhile, funny things have happened. Robot in Groverton kills a man. Medic guard shoots down eighteen men coming out of a burning house. Decon Squad invades Dellfield when there's nothing wrong with the generator.

”Now all h.e.l.l has busted loose. The Lodge went up in a flare of radiation an hour ago, and since then all robot services in the city have gone phooey. It looks to the citizens as though the senator had an illegal hand in too many pies. They're suspicious.

”Good work, boy.”

”Thanks,” I said, trying to keep from looking at my arm, where the doctor was peeling back flesh.

The Director lifted a white eyebrow. ”Something?”

I looked at the wall. ”I'm just burned up, that's all. Not at you; at the whole mess. How did a nasty slug like Rowley get elected in the first place? And what right did he have to stay in such an important job?”

”I know,” the Director said somberly. ”And that's our job. Immortality is something the human race isn't ready for yet. The ma.s.ses can't handle it, and the individual can't handle it. And, since we can't get rid of them legally, we have to do it this way. a.s.sa.s.sination. But it can't be done overnight.”

”You've handled immortality,” I pointed out.

”Have I?” he asked softly. ”No. No, son. I haven't; I'm using it the same way they are. For power. The Federal government doesn't have any power any more. I have it.

”I'm using it in a different way, granted. Once there were over a hundred Immortals. Last week there were six. Today there are five. One by one, over the years, we have picked them off, and they are never replaced. The rest simply gobble up the territory and the power and split it between them rather than let a newcomer get into their tight little circle.

”But I'm just as dictatorial in my way as they are in theirs. And when the status quo is broken, and civilization begins to go ahead again, I'll have to die with the rest of them.

”But never mind that. What about you? I got most of the story from you under the hypno. That was a beautiful piece of deduction.”

I took the cigarette he offered me and took a deep lungful of smoke. ”How else could it be? The robot was trying to capture me. But also it was trying to keep anyone else from killing me. As a matter of fact, it pa.s.sed up several chances to get me in order to keep others from killing me.

”It had to be the senator's last order. The old boy had lived so long that he still wasn't convinced he was dying. So he gave one last order to the robot: 'Get Gifford back here-ALIVE!'

”And then there was the queer fact that the robot never reported that the senator was dead, but kept right on defending the Lodge as though he were alive. That could only mean that the ORDERS circuits were still open. As long as they were, the robot thought the senator was still alive.

”So the only way I could get out of the mess was to let the Lodge take me. I knew the phone at Dellfield would connect me with the Lodge-at least indirectly. I called it and waited.

”Then, when I started giving orders, the Lodge accepted me as the senator. That was all there was to it.” The Director nodded. ”A good job, son. A good job.”

WITH FOLDED HANDS.

by Jack Williamson.

This memorable story is a fitting one with which to close the book, for it shows the machine both as friend and as foe, as servant and-ultimately-as master. It typifies the basic tactic of any worthwhile science-fiction story: to explore the true meaning of a concept, arriving at an understanding not necessarily visible at first glance. In this case, the author takes a look at the concept of service. What would it be like, he asks, if we had machines that met our every need, perfectly benevolent robot servants that guarded us from want and suffering? The story becomes an inquiry into the nature of happiness-profound, moving, and terrifying.

Jack Williamson is one of science fiction's most vigorous veterans. His first published story appeared in 1928, when he was a very young man; and, through a career spanning four decades, he has remained consistently able to adapt to changing literary styles, so that his work always represents modern science fiction at its best. Today he divides his time between his typewriter and a college cla.s.sroom in New Mexico, where he teaches a course in writing.

Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he first met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block-his wife usually had the car-and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.

The wall wasn't any common brick or stone, but some-thing sleek and bright and strange. Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and surprised at this glittering obstruction-it certainly hadn't been here last week.

Then he saw the thing in the window.

The window itself wasn't any ordinary gla.s.s. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:

Two Rivers Agency.

HUMANOID INSt.i.tUTE.

The Perfect Mechanicals ”To Serve and Obey, And Guard Men from Harm.”

His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and ordinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.

Underhill sold androids-when he could. His next consignment was due tomorrow, and he didn't quite know how to meet the bill.