From the compilation The Far Out Worlds of A E Van Vogt (1973)
v0.9 by the N.E.R.D's. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.
The human automaton stirred uneasily in his small, almost invisible plane. His eyes strained into the visiplate, scanning the sky ahead. Out of the blue came two flashes of fire. Instantly, the plane careered as if struck from a double blow.
It fell slowly at first, then more rapidly, down into the enemy lines. As the Earth came near, a resisting mechanism went into operation. The rate of fall grew slower. The automaton had time to see that there was a vast ruin of a city below. Soundlessly, the tiny machine settled into the shelter of the crumbled base of what had once been a building.
A moment passed; then the radio beside him sibilated. Voices which were strange to him were talking to each other.
'Bill!' said the first voice.,
'Shoot!'
'Did we get him?'
'Don't think so. Not permanently, anyway. I think he went down under at least partial control, though it's hard to tell with that safety device they have. My guess is he's down there somewhere with his motor shut off.'
'I think we disabled him.'
'Well, then, you know the routine when one of 'em is cornered just inside our lines. Do your psychology stuff. I'll call the Vulture.'
'Don't pass the buck to me. I'm sick of spouting those lines. You give 'em!'
'All right. Shoot me the come-on!'
'Hmm… he's down there. Think we ought to go after him?'
'Naw! The automatons they send out this far are basically the clever ones. That means we couldn't capture him. He'd be just fast enough on the uptake to make it necessary for us to kill him, and who the devil wants to kill those poor, tortured slaves? - Did you get his picture?'
'Yep, he was listening with an intent look on his face. Fine looking chap… It's funny, and kind of terrible how all this started, isn't it?'
'Yeah. Wonder what this guy's number is.'
There was a distinct pause. The automaton stirred uneasily. His number? Ninety-two, of course. What else? The voice was speaking again:
'Poor fellow probably doesn't remember that he once had a name.'
The other voice Said, 'Who'd have thought when they first made a human duplicate - flesh and blood and bones and all -that today, only fifty years later, we'd be fighting for our lives against people who look exactly like us, except that they're natural eunuchs.'
The automaton listened with vague attention, as the two men went on talking. Every little while he nodded as their words reminded him of something he had almost forgotten. The human duplicates had first been called robots. They had resented that name, and changed it around to make it Tobor, and that stuck. The Tobors proved to be very effective scientists and at first no one noticed how rapidly they took over scientific posts in every part of the world. Nor was it immediately noticed that the Tobors were secretly carrying on a duplication campaign on a tremendous scale. The great shock to the human masses came when Tobor-infiltrated governments on each continent simultaneously enacted laws declaring duplication would henceforth be the only means of procreation. Sex was forbidden under penalty of a fine for the first offense then imprisonment, and then, for recalcitrants, the Tobor-invented process of being made into an automaton.
A special police organization - which turned out to be already in existence - was set up to administer the new law. Tobor enforcement officers swung into action immediately, and there was some street fighting on that first day. Neither side even thought of compromise, so within two weeks full-scale war was raging.
The account ended, as Bill said, 'I guess he's heard enough. Come on, let's go.'
There was muffled laughter, then silence.
The automaton waited, disturbed. Sketchy memories were in his mind of a past when there had been no war, and, somewhere, there was a girl and another world.
The unreal pictures faded. And again there was only this ship that clothed his body in almost formfitting metal. There was the need to go on, aerial pictures to be taken… Must get up into the air.
He felt the ship tug in response to his urgent thought, but no movement followed. For seconds, he lay lethargically; then came a second urge for flight. Once more the tiny ship writhed with effort, but no upward movement resulted.
This time the automaton had the slow thought. Something must have fallen across the ship, and is holding it down… Have to go out and remove it.
He squirmed against the metal and padding that encased him. Sweat poured down his cheeks, but presently he stood free in ankle-deep dust. As he had been trained to do on such occasions, he checked his equipment… weapons, tools, gas mask-
He flung himself flat on the ground as a great, dark ship swooped down out of the sky, and settled to the ground several hundred yards away. From his prone position, the automaton watched it, but there was no sign of movement now. Puzzled, the automaton climbed to his feet. He recalled that one of the men on the radio had said a Vulture had been called.
So they had been playing a trick on him, pretending to go away. Clearly visible on the ship's hull was the name: Vulture 121.
Its appearance seemed to suggest that an attack was to be made. His strong, determined mouth tightened. They'd soon learn it didn't pay to meddle with a Tobor slave.
Die for Tobor, mighty Tobor…
Tensely, the young woman watched as her pilot lowered the high-speed plane toward the leveled ruin of the city where the Vulture lay. The big ship was unmistakable. It towered above the highest remnant of shattered wall. It was a black bulk against the gray-dark sameness of the rubble.
There was a bump and she was out of the machine, clutching her bag. Twice, her right ankle twisted cruelly as she raced over the uneven ground. Breathlessly, she ran up the narrow gangplank.
A steel door clicked open. As she hurried inside, she glanced behind her. The door clanged shut; and she realized gratefully that she was safe.
She stopped, as her eyes had to accustom themselves to the dim metal room. After a moment she saw a little group of men. One of them, a small individual with glasses and a thin face, stepped forward. He took the suitcase from her with one hand, and with the other, he grabbed her hand, and shook it warmly.
'Good girl!' he said. 'That was well and swiftly run, Miss Harding. I'm sure no spying ship of the robots could have identified you in any way during the half-minute you were exposed. Oh, pardon me.'
He smiled. 'I shouldn't be calling them robots; should I? They've reversed all that, haven't they? Tobors is their name. It does have more rhythm and should be psychologically more satisfying to them. There now, you've caught your breath. By the way, I'm Dr Claremeyer.'
'Doctor!' Juanita Harding managed to say. 'Are you sure it's him?'
'Definitely; your fianc6, John Gregson, chemist extraordinary.' It was a younger man who spoke. He stepped forward and took the suitcase from the older man's fingers. 'The patrol got the picture by the new process, whereby we tune in on their communicating plates. It was flashed to headquarters, and then transmitted to us.'
He paused, and smiled engagingly. 'My name is Madden. That's Phillips with the long gloomy face. The big fellow with the uncombed hair, lurking there in the background like an elephant, is Rice, our field man. And you've already met Dr Claremeyer.'
Rice said gruffly, 'We?ve got a hell of a job here, ma'am, begging your pardon for them rough words.'
Miss Harding took off her hat with a brisk sweep of one hand. The shadows retreated from her face into her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. 'Mr Rice, I live with a father whose nickname is "Cyclone" Harding. To him, our everyday language is an enemy which he attacks with all available weapons. Does that answer your apology?'
The big man chuckled. 'You win. But let's get down to business. Madden, you've got a brain that thinks in words; tell Miss Harding the situation!'
'Right!' The young man took up the refrain grimly. 'We had the good fortune to be in the air near here when the first report came through that an automaton had been brought down alive. As soon as the identification arrived, we asked army headquarters to set up a defense ring of all available planes. They stripped the entire nearby line to help us.'
He paused, frowning. 'It has had to be very carefully done, because we don't want to give the Tobors any idea of what's going on. Your fianc6 can't get away; that is certain, I think. And he can't be rescued unless they come out in force of a size that catches us momentarily off guard. Our big problem is to capture him alive.'
'And that, of course' - it was Claremeyer, who cut in with a shrug of his shoulders - 'may be easy or it may be difficult.
Unfortunately, it must be fast. The Tobors will not be unaware long of this concentration of forces; then they will examine his file, analyze at least a part of the true situation, and act.
'The second unfortunate aspect is that in the past we have allowed ourselves a percentage of failures. You must realize that our tactics are almost entirely psychological, based upon fundamental human impulses.'
Patiently, he explained the method.
'Ninety-two!… This is Sorn speaking.'
The voice came sharp, insistent, commanding, from the automaton's wrist radio. The automaton stirred in his concrete shelter. 'Yes, Master?'
Apparently the contact was all that was desired, for he heard the other say, 'He's still alive!' The voice was farther away this time, as if the humanoid had turned to speak to someone else.
A second voice spoke hesitantly. 'Normally, I wouldn't have bothered, but this is the one that destroyed his file. Now, a Vulture crew is trying to save him.'
'They do it every time.'
'I know, I know.' The second speaker sounded impatient with himself, as if he was aware that he might be acting foolishly. 'Still, they've already given a lot of time to him, more than normal, it seems to me. And there is the fact that this particular ship engaged in a lengthy series of code messages with its headquarters. Afterwards, a woman arrived on the scene.'
'They nearly always use women in these rescue operations.' The Tobor's voice held a note of distaste, but his words were a dismissal of the other's argument.
This time there was silence for many seconds. Finally, the doubting one spoke again: 'In my department, I have been acutely conscious that somewhere in our operations about two years ago we unexpectedly captured a human chemist who, it was stated, had discovered a process for sexualizing Tobors.'
His emotional disgust was almost too much for him, and in spite of the frankness of his next words, his voice trembled. 'Unfortunately, we learned of this too late for us to identify the individual involved. Apparently, he was put through a routine interview, and dementalized.'
He had full control of himself again and went on sardonically. 'Of course the whole thing could be just a propaganda story, designed to unnerve us. And yet, at the time, our Intelligence reported that an atmosphere of gloom and depression pervaded human headquarters. It appears that we raided a city, captured him in his home, wrecked bis laboratory and burned his papers.'
His tone implied that he was shrugging. 'It was one of scores of similar raids, quite impossible to identify. Prisoners captured in such forays were in no way differentiated from those captured in other ways.'
Once more, silence… then, 'Shall I order him to kill himself?' 'Find out if he has a weapon.'
There was a pause. The voice came close. 'Have you a blaster, Ninety-two?'
The human automaton, who had listened to the conversation with a faraway blankness in his eyes and mind, alerted as the question was directed at him through his wrist radio. 'I have hand weapons,' he said dully. Once more the interrogator turned away from the distant microphone. 'Well?' he said.
'Direct action is too dangerous,8 said the second Tobor. 'You know how they resist actual suicide. Sometimes it brings them right out of their automaton state. The will to live is too basic' 'Then we're right back where we started.' 'No! Tell him specifically to defend himself to the death. That's on a different level. That's an appeal to his loyalty, to his indoctrinated hatred of our human enemies and to his patriotism to the Tobor cause.'
Lying in the rubble, the automaton nodded as the Master's firm voice issued the commands. Naturally… to the death… of course.
On the radio, Sorn still sounded dissatisfied. 'I think we should force the issue. I think we should concentrate projectors in the area, and see what happens.' 'They've always accepted such challenges in the past.' 'Up to a point only. I believe most earnestly that we should test their reaction. I feel that this man resisted too hard during his captivity and there's a tremendous pressure working on him.'
'Human beings are very deceptive,' said the other doubtfully. 'Some of them are merely anxious to go home. It seems to be a powerful motivation.'
His objection must have been rhetorical. After a bare moment of silence, he looked up and said decisively, 'Very well, we'll attack!'
By an hour after dark, a hundred projectors were engaged on both sides. The night flashed with long trailers of bright flame.
'Phew!' Rice raced up the gangplank into the ship. His heavy face was scarlet with effort. As the door clanged shut behind him, he gasped, 'Miss Harding, that fiance of yours is a dangerous man. He's trigger happy, and needs more propaganda.'
The girl was pale. She had watched Rice's attempt to get the screen into position from the great barrier window in the observation room. She said, 'Maybe I should go out now!'
'And get burned!' Dr Claremeyer came forward. He was blinking behind his glasses. 'Now don't you feel badly, Miss Harding. I know it seems incredible that the man who loves you has been so changed that he would kill you on sight - but you'll just have to accept the reality. The fact that the Tobors have decided to put up a fight for him hasn't helped matters any.'
'Those beasts!' she said. It was a dry sob. 'What are you going to do now?'
'More propaganda.'
'You think he'll hear it over the roar of the projectors?' She was astonished.
'He knows what it is,' said Dr Claremeyer matter-of-factly. 'The pattern has been established. Even a single word coming through will be a reminder of the whole pattern.'
A few moments later, she was listening gloomily while the loudspeakers blared their message:
'… You are a human being. We are human beings. You were captured by the robots. We want to rescue you from the robots. These robots call themselves Tobors because it sounds better. They're robots. They're not human beings, but you are a human being. We are human beings, and we want to rescue you. Do everything that we ask you to do. Do nothing that they tell you to do. We want to make you well. We want to save you…'
Abruptly, the ship moved. A moment later, the Vulture commander came over.
'I had to give the order to take off,' he said. 'We'll come back again about dawn. The Tobors must be losing equipment at a terrific rate. It's a bridgehead fight for them, but it's getting too hot for us also.'
He must have felt the girl would place, the worst construction on the withdrawal order. He explained to her in a low voice:
'We can depend on a slave using every precaution to stay alive. He'll have been given training for that. Besides, we did get the screen up and the picture will show over and over.'
He went on, before she could speak, 'Besides, we have been given permission to try direct contact with him.'
'What does that mean?'
'We'll use a weak signal that won't carry more than a few hundred yards. That way they won't be able to tune in on what we're saying. Our hope is that he'll be sufficiently stimulated to tell us his secret formula.'
Juanita Harding sat for a long time, frowning. Her comment, when it finally came, was extremely feminine. 'I'm not sure,' she said, 'that I approve of the pictures you're showing on that screen.'
The commander said judiciously, 'We've got to strike at the basic drives of human beings.'
He departed hastily.
John Gregson, who had been an automaton, became aware that he was clawing at a bright screen. As he grew more conscious of his actions, he slowed his frantic attempt to grasp at the elusive shapes that had lured him out of hiding. He stepped back.
All around him was intense darkness. As he backed away a little further, he stumbled over a twisted girder. He started to fall, but saved himself by grasping at the burned and rusted metal. It creaked a little from his weight and flakes of metal came away free in his hands.
He retreated anxiously into the darkness to take better advantages of the light reflections. For the first time he recognized that he was in one of the destroyed cities. He thought: But how did I get here? What's happened to me?
A voice from his wrist radio made him jump. 'Sorn!' it said insistently. The icy tone stiffened Gregson. Deep in his mind a bell of recognition clanged its first warning. He was about to reply, when he realized that it was not he who had been addressed.
'Yes?' The answer was clear enough, but it seemed to come from a much greater distance.
'Where are you now?'
Sorn said slowly, 'I landed about half a mile from the screen. It was a misjudgment, as I intended to come down much closer. Unfortunately, in landing I got my directions twisted. I can't see a thing.'
'The screen they're using for the pictures is still up. I can see a reflection of it in Ninety-two's Wristo. Surely it'll be a bright landmark.'
'It must be in a hollow, or behind a pile of debris. I'm in pitch darkness. Contact Ninety-two and - '
The first reference to his number had started the train of associations. The second one brought such a flood of hideous memory that Gregson cringed. In a flashing kaleidoscope of pictures, he realized his situation and tried to recall the immediate sequence of events that had brought him back to control of himself. Somebody had called his name insistently… not his number - his name. Each time they had asked him a question, something about a formula for - For what? He couldn't remember, something about - about - Abruptly, it came back!
Crouching there in the darkness, he closed his eyes in a sheer physical reaction. 'I gave it to them. I told them the formula. But who was - them?"
It could only have been some member of the crew of a Vulture ship, he told himself shakily. The Tobors didn't know his name. To them he was… Ninety-two.
That recollection brought him back with a start to his own predicament. He was just in time to hear the voice on the Wristo say vindictively:
'All right; I've got it. I'll be over there in ten minutes.'
The Tobor in the distant Control Center was impersonal. 'This is on your own head, Sorn. You seem to have an obsession about this case.'
'They were broadcasting to him on a local wave,' said Sorn in a dark voice, 'so direct, so close that we couldn't catch what they were saying. And his answer, when he finally made it, was interfered with so that, again, we didn't hear it, but it was a formula of some kind. I'm counting on the possibility that he was not able to give them the full description. Since he's still at the screen, he hasn't been rescued, so if I can kill him now, within minutes - '
There was a click… The voice trailed off into silence. Gregson stood in the darkness beside the screen, and shud-deringly considered his position.
Where was the Vulture? The sky was pitch dark, though there was an ever-so faint light in the east, the first herald of the coming dawn. The sound of the projectors had become a mutter far away, no longer threatening. The great battle of the night was over…
The battle of the individuals was about to begin…
Gregson retreated even farther into the darkness, and fumbled over his body for hand weapons. There were none. 'But that's ridiculous,' he told himself shakily. 'I had a blaster and - '
He stopped the thought. Once again, desperate now, he searched himself… Nothing. He guessed that in his mad scramble to get to the screen, he had lost his weapons.
He was still teetering indecisively when he heard a movement in the near night.
Vulture 121 landed gently in the intense darkness of the false dawn. Juanita Harding had taken off her clothes, and now had a robe wrapped around her. She did not hesitate when Rice beckoned. He grinned at her reassuringly.
'I'm taking along a cylinder of the stuff,' he said, 'just in case he doesn't become inspired quickly enough.'
She smiled wanly, but said nothing. Dr Claremeyer came to the door with them. He gave her hand a quick squeeze.
'Remember,' he said, 'this is war!'
She replied, 'I know. And all's fair in love and war, isn't it?'
'Now you're talking.'
A moment later they were gone into the night.
Gregson was retreating in earnest and he felt a lot better. It was going to be hard for any one person to locate him in this vast maze of shattered concrete and marble and metal.
Moment by moment, however, the desolate horizon grew lighter. He saw the ship suddenly in the shadowy ruins to his right. It's shape was unmistakable. Vulture! Gregson raced toward it over the uneven ruins of what had once been a paved street.
Gasping with relief, he saw that the gangplank was down. As he raced up it, two men covered him with their blasters. Abruptly, one of them gasped, 'It's Gregson!'
Weapons were scraped back into their leathery holsters. Hands grasped eagerly at his hands, and there was a pumping of arms. Eyes searched his face eagerly for signs of sanity, found them, and glowed with pleasure. A thousand words attacked the dawn air.
'We got your formula.'
'Great… wonderful.'
'The genius made up some of the hormone gas in our own ship lab. How fast does it work?'
Gregson guessed that the 'genius' was the tall, gloomy individual who had been introduced as Phillips. He said, 'It takes only a few seconds. After all, you breathe it in and it's taken right into your bloodstream. It's pretty powerful stuff.'
Madden said, 'We had some idea of using it to intensify your own reactions. In fact, Rice took some - ' He stopped. 'But just a minute,' he said, 'Rice and Miss Harding are - ' He stopped again.
It was the small man, Dr Claremeyer, who took up the thread of Madden's thought. 'Mr Gregson,' he said, 'we saw a man on our infra red plates heading for the screen. He was too far away to identify, so we took it for granted it was you. And so, Rice and Miss Harding went out and - '
The Commander cut him off at that point. 'Quick, let's get out there! It may be a trap!'
Gregson scarcely heard that. He was already racing down the gangplank.
'Sorn!' The voice on the Wristo sounded impatient. 'Sorn, what's happened to you?'
In the half-darkness near the screen, the men and the girl listened to the words of the Tobor on Gregson's Wristo. From their vantage point they watched Sorn looking at the pictures on the screen itself.
'Sorn, your last report was that you were near where Ninety-two was last known to be hiding - *
Rice put one plump hand over Gregson's Wristo, to block off the sound; and whispered, 'That's when I let him have it. Boy, I never had a better idea than when I took along a cylinder of your gas, Gregson. I shot a dose of it at him from fifty feet, and he never even knew what hit him.'
' - Sorn, I know you're still alive. I can hear you mumbling to yourself.'
Rice said, 'We'll have to be careful of our dosage in the future. He's practically ready to eat up the pictures. You can see for yourself - the Tobor-human war is as good as over.'
Gregson watched silently as the one-time Tobor leader scrambled eagerly in front of the screen, A dozen girls were on parade beside a pool. Periodically, they would all dive into the water. There would be a flash of long, bare limbs, the glint of a tanned back, then they would all climb out. They did that over and over.
The trouble was, each time Sorn tried to grasp one of the images, his shadow fell across the screen, and blotted her out. Frustrated, he rushed to another, only to have the same thing happen again.
'Sorn, answer me!'
This time the Tobor paused. The reply he made then must have shocked the entire Tobor headquarters, and the effect reached out to all the Tobor armies around the world.
Gregson tightened his arm appreciatively around Juanita's waist (she still wore her robe over the beauty with which she was to have lured him back to safety) as he listened to the fateful words.
'Women,' Sorn was saying, 'they're wonderful!'