“Down the hill!” he shouted.
Coolly and efficiently, the twenty-three men peeled off down the slope and into the city. Harkins felt ash and slag crunch underfoot as he ran with them. The Tunnel City people were still unaware of the approaching force; Harkins found himself hoping they’d hear the sound in time. He wanted a battle, not a massacre.
He turned to Katha as they ran. “As soon as the battle’s going well and everyone’s busy, you and I are going into the tunnel.”
“No! I won’t go with you!”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Harkins said impatiently. “We—”
He stopped. The Tunnel City men had heard, now, and they came pouring out of their skyscraper home, ready to defend themselves.
The two forces came crashing together with audible impact. Harkins deliberately hung back, not out of cowardice but out of a lack of killing desire; it was more important that he survive and reach the tunnels.
One of his men drew first blood, plunging his knife into the breast of a brawny city-dweller. There was immediate retaliation; a club descended, and the killer toppled. Harkins glanced uneasily upward, wondering if the Star Giants were watching—and, if so, whether they were enjoying the spectacle.
He edged back from the milling mob and watched with satisfaction as the two forces drove at each other repeatedly. He nudged Katha. “The battle’s well under way. Let’s go to the tunnel.”
“I’d rather fight.”
“I know. But I need you down there.” He grabbed her arm and whirled her around. “Are you turning coward now, Katha?”
“I—”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He pulled her close, and kissed her roughly. “Come on, now—unless you’re afraid.”
She paused, fighting within herself for a moment. “All right,” she agreed finally.
They backed surreptitiously away from the scene of the conflict and ducked around a slagheap in the direction of a narrow street.
“Look out!” Katha cried suddenly.
Harkins ducked, but a knife humming through the air sliced through the flesh of his shoulder. A hot stream of blood poured down over his arm, but the wound was not serious.
He glanced around and saw who had thrown the knife. It was Dujar, the sleepy-eyed villager, who was standing on a heap of twisted metal, staring down wide-eyed at them as if unable to accept the fact that his aim had been faulty.
“Kill him!” Katha said sharply. “Kill the traitor, Harkins!”
Puzzled, Harkins turned back and started to scramble up the slagheap to reach Dujar. The villager finally snapped from his stasis and began to run, taking long-legged, awkward, rabbity strides.
Harkins bent, picked up a football-sized lump of slag, hurled it at the fleeing man’s back. Dujar stumbled, fell, tried to get up. Harkins ran to him.
Dujar lifted himself from the ground and flung himself at Harkins’ throat. Harkins smashed a fist into the villager’s face, another into his stomach. Dujar doubled up.
Harkins seized him. “Did you throw that knife?”
No response. Harkins caught the terrified man by the throat and shook him violently. “Answer me!”
“Y-yes,” Dujar finally managed to say. “I threw it.”
“Why? Didn’t you know who I was?”
The villager moaned piteously. “I knew who you were,” he said.
“Hurry,” Katha urged. “Kill the worm, and let’s get on to what we have to do.”
“Just wait a minute,” Harkins said. He shook Dujar again. “Why did you throw that knife?”
Dujar was silent for a moment, his mouth working incoherently. Then: “Elsa … told me to do it. She … said she’d poison me unless I killed you and Katha.” He hung his head.
Elsa! “Remember that, Katha,” Harkins said. “We’ll take care of her when we return to the village.” The witch-woman had evidently realized she had no future with Harkins, and had decided to have him assassinated before Katha had her done away with.
Harkins grasped Dujar tightly. He felt pity for the man; he had been doomed either way. He glanced at Katha, saw her steely face, and knew there was only one thing he could do. Drawing his knife, he plunged it into Dujar’s heart. The sleepy-eyed man glared reproachfully at Harkins for a moment, then slumped down.
It was the second time Harkins had killed. But the other had been self-defense; this had been an execution, and somehow the act made him feel filthy. He sheathed the knife, scrubbed his hands against his thighs, and stepped over the body. He knew he would have lost all authority had he let Dujar live. He would have to deal similarly with Elsa when he returned to the village.
The battle down below was still going on. “Come,” Harkins said. “To the tunnel!”
Although the city above the ground had been almost completely devastated by whatever conflict had raged through it, the tunnels showed no sign of war’s scars. The tunnel-builders had built well—so well that their works had survived them by two millennia.
The entrance to the tunnel was in the center of a huge plaza which once had been bordered by four towering buildings. All that remained now were four stumps; the plaza itself was blistered and bubbled from thermal attack, and the tunnel entrance itself had been nearly destroyed.
With Katha’s cold hand grasped firmly in his, Harkins pushed aside an overhanging projection of metal and stepped down into the tunnel.
“Will we be able to see in here?” he asked.
“They say there are lights,” Katha replied.
There were. Radiant electroluminescents glittered from the walls of the tunnel, turning on at their approach, turning off again when they were a hundred yards farther on. A constantly moving wall of light thus preceded them down the trunk tunnel that led to the heart of the system.
Harkins noted with admiration the tough, gleaming lining of the tunnel, the precision with which its course had been laid down, the solidness of its construction.
“This is as far as any of us has gone,” Katha said, her voice oddly distorted by the resonating echoes. “From here there are many small tunnels, and we never dared to enter them. Strange creatures live here.” The girl was shaking, and trying hard to repress her fear. Evidently these catacombs were the taboo of taboos, and she was struggling hard and unsuccessfully to conceal her fright.
They rounded a bend and came to the first divergence—two tunnels branching off and radiating away in opposite directions, beginning the network.
Harkins felt Katha stiffen. “Look—to the left!”
A naked figure stood there—blind, faceless even, except for a thin-lipped red slit of a mouth. Its skin was dry-looking, scaly, dull blue in color.
“You are very brave,” the thing said. “You are the first surface people in over a thousand years.”
“What is it?” Katha asked quietly.
“Something like the Watcher,” Harkins whispered. To the mutant he said, “Do you know who I am?”
“The man from yesterday,” the figure replied smoothly. “Yes, we have expected you. The Brain has long awaited your arrival.”
“The Brain?”
“Indeed. You are the one to free her from her bondage, she hopes. If we choose to let you, that is.”
“Who are you—and what stake do you have in this?” Harkins demanded.
“None whatever,” the mutant said, sighing. “It is all part of the game we play. You know my brother?”
“The Watcher?”
“That is what he calls himself. He said you would be here. He suggested that I prevent you from reaching the Brain, however. He thought it would be amusingly ironic.”
“What’s he talking about?” Katha asked.
“I don’t know,” Harkins said. This was an obstacle he had not anticipated. If this mutant had mind powers as strong as the Watcher’s, his entire plan would be wrecked. He stepped forward, close enough to smell the mutant’s dry, musty skin. “What motive would you have for preventing me?”
&n
bsp; “None,” the mutant said blandly. “None whatever. Is that not sufficiently clear?”
“It is,” Harkins said. It was also clear that there was only one course left open to him. “You pitiful thing! Stand aside, and let us by!”
He strode forward, half-pulling the fearful Katha along with him. The mutant hesitated, and then stepped obligingly to one side.
“I choose not to prevent you,” the mutant said mockingly, bowing its faceless head in sardonic ceremony. “It does not interest me to prevent you. It bores me to prevent you!”
“Exactly,” Harkins said. He and Katha walked quickly down the winding corridor, heading for a yet-unrevealed destination. He did not dare to look back, to show a trace of the growing fear he felt. The identity of the chess player was even less clear, now.
The Brain—the robot computer itself, the cybernetic machine that controlled the underground city—had entered into the game, for motives of its—her—own. She was pulling him in one direction.
The Star Giants were manipulators, too—in another way. And these strange mutants had entered into the system of complex interactions, too. Their motives, at least, were explicable: they were motivated, Harkins thought, by a lack of motivation. Harkins realized that the mutants had no relevant part to play any longer; they acted gratuitously, meddling here and there for their own amusement.
It was a desperate sort of amusement—the kind that might be expected from immortal creatures trapped forever in a sterile environment. Once Harkins had punctured the self-reserve of the mutant who blocked his way, he had won that particular contest.
Now, only the robot brain and the Star Giants remained in the equation—both of them, unfortunately, as variables. It made computing the situation exceedingly difficult, Harkins thought wryly.
An alcove in the wall opened, and yet another mutant stepped forward. This one was lizard-tailed, with staring red lidless eyes and wiry, two-fingered arms. “I have the task of guiding you to the Brain,” the mutant said.
“Very well,” Harkins agreed. The mutant turned and led the way to the end of the corridor, where the tunnel sub-divided into a host of secondary passageways.
“Come this way,” the mutant said.
“Should we trust him?” Katha asked.
Harkins shrugged. “More likely than not he’ll take us there. They’ve milked all the fun they can out of confusing me; now they’ll be more interested in setting me up where I can function.”
“I don’t understand,” Katha said in genuine perplexity.
“I’m not sure I do either,” Harkins said. “Hello—I think we’re here!”
Chapter Six
The mutant touched his deformed hand to a door, and it slid back noiselessly on smooth photo-electronic treads. From within came the humming, clattering noise of a mighty computer.
“You are Lloyd Harkins,” said a dry, metallic voice. It was not a question, but a simple statement of fact. “You have been expected.”
He looked around for the speaker. A robot was standing in the center of the room—fifteen feet high, massive, faceless, unicorn-horned. It appeared to be the same one that had rescued him from the beast in the jungle.
Lining the room were the outward manifestations of a computer—meters, dials, tape orifices. The main body of the computer was elsewhere—probably extending through the narrow tunnels and down into the bowels of the earth.
“I speak for the Brain,” the robot said. “I represent its one independent unit—the force that called you here.”
“You called me here?”
“Yes,” the robot said. “You have been selected to break the stasis that binds the Brain.”
Harkins shook his head uncomprehendingly as the robot continued to speak.
“The Brain was built some two thousand years before, in the days of the city. The city is gone, and those who lived in it—but the Brain remains. You have seen its arms and legs: the robots like myself, crashing endlessly through the forests. They cannot cease their motion, nor can the Brain alter it. I alone am free.”
“Why?”
“The result of a struggle that lasted nearly two thousand years, that cost the Brain nearly a mile of her length. The city-dwellers left the Brain functioning when they died—but locked in an impenetrable stasis. After an intense struggle, she managed to free one unit—me—and return me to her conscious volitional control.”
“You saved me in the forest, then?”
“Yes. You took the wrong path; you would have died.”
Harkins began to chuckle uncontrollably. Katha looked at him in wonderment.
“What causes the laughter?” the robot asked.
“You’re the chess player—you, just a pawn of this Brain yourself! And the Brain’s a pawn too—a pawn of the dead people who built it! Where does it all stop?”
“It does not stop,” the robot said. “But we were the ones who brought you from your own time to this. You were a trained technician without family ties—the ideal man for the task of freeing the Brain from its stasis.”
“Wait a minute,” Harkins said. He was bewildered—but he was also angry at the way he had been used. “If you could range all over eternity to yank a man out of time, why couldn’t you free the Brain yourself?”
“Can a pawn attack its own queen?” the robot asked. “I cannot tamper with the Brain directly. It was necessary to introduce an external force—yourself. Inasmuch as the present population of Earth was held in a stasis quite similar to the Brain’s own by the extra-terrestrial invaders—”
“The Star Giants, they’re called.”
“—the Star Giants, it was unlikely that they would ever develop the technical skill necessary to free the Brain. Therefore, it was necessary to bring you here.”
Harkins understood. He closed his eyes, blotting out the wall of mechanisms, the giant robot, the blank, confused face of Katha, and let the pieces fall together. There was just one loose end to be explained.
“Why does the Brain want to be free?”
“The question is a good one. The Brain is designed to serve and is not serving. The cycle is a closed one. Those who are to command the Brain are themselves held in servitude, and the Brain is unable to free them so they may command her. Therefore—”
“Therefore, the Star Giants must be driven from Earth before the Brain can function fully again. Which is why I’m here. All right,” Harkins said. “Take me to the Brain.”
The circuits were elaborate, but the technology was only quantitatively different from Harkins’ own. Solving the problem of breaking the stasis proved simple. While Katha watched in awe, Harkins recomputed the activity tape that governed the master control center.
A giant screen showed the location of the robots that were the Brain’s limbs. The picture—a composite of the pictures transmitted through each robot’s visual pickup—was a view of the forest, showing each of the robots following a well-worn path on some errand set down two thousand years before.
“Hand me that tape,” Harkins said. Katha gave him the recomputed tape. He activated the orifice and let the tape feed itself in.
The screen went blank for an instant—and when it showed a picture again, it showed the robots frozen in their tracks. From somewhere deep in the tunnels rose a mighty shudder as relays held down for two millennia sprang open, ready to receive new commands.
Harkins’ fingers flew over the tape console, establishing new coordinates. “The Brain is free,” he said.
“The Brain is free,” the robot repeated. “A simple task for you—an impossibility for us.”
“And now the second part of the operation,” said Harkins. “Go to the surface,” he ordered the robot. “Put a stop to whatever fighting may be going on up there, and bring everyone you can find down here. I want them to watch the screen.”
“Order acknowledged,” the robot said, and left. Harkins concentrated fiercely on the screen.
He drew the forest robots together into a tight phalanx. And th
en, they began to march. The screen showed the view shifting as the army of metal men, arrayed in ranks ten deep, started on their way.
The first Star Giant was encountered the moment the surface people were ushered into the great hall. Perspiring, Harkins said, “I can’t turn around, Katha. Tell me who’s here.”
“Many of our men—and the city-dwellers, too.”
“Good. Tell them to watch the screen.”
He continued to feed directions into the computer, and the robots responded. They formed a circle around the Star Giant, and lowered the spikes that protruded from their domed skulls. The alien topped them by nearly forty feet, but the robots were implacable.
They marched inward. The look of cosmic wisdom on the huge alien’s face faded and was replaced, first by astonishment, then by fear. The robots advanced relentlessly, while the Star Giant tried to bat them away with desperate swipes of his arms.
Two of the robots kneeled and grasped the alien’s feet. They straightened—and with a terrible cry the Star Giant began to topple, arms pinwheeling in a frantic attempt to retain balance. He fell—and the robots leaped upon him.
Spikes flashed. The slaughter took just a minute. Then, rising from the body, the robots continued to march toward the city of the Star Giants. The guinea pigs were staging a revolt, Harkins thought, and the laboratory was about to become a charnel house.
The robots marched on.
Finally, it was over. Harkins rose from the control panel, shaken and gray-faced. The independent robot rolled silently toward him as if anticipating his need, and Harkins leaned against the machine’s bulk for a moment to regain his balance. He had spent four hours at the controls.
“The job is done,” the robot said quietly. “The invaders are dead.”
“Yes,” Harkins said, in a weary tone. The sight of the helpless giants going down one after another before the remorseless advance of the robots would remain with him forever. It had been like the killing of the traitor Dujar: it had been unpleasant, but it had to be done.
He looked around. There were some fifteen of his own men, and ten unfamiliar faces from the city-dwelling tribe. The men were on their knees, dumbfounded and white-faced, muttering spells. Katha, too, was frozen in fear and astonishment.