Ellison Wonderland (16 page)

So the Guard had to accept it that way. They had to take Walkaway with his individuality . . . too much for a robot? And they had to send him on the first bounce to the stars, as a metal man with thoughts of his own.

That was as it should have been.

For had not Leon Packett created Walkaway?

Had not Packett re–arranged the circuits to provide a hidden factor the Guard knew nothing about?

Had it not all been planned that way?

To results we know now.

The ship was crazily–shaped. It was a sundial. With a thick trunk, and two clear face–plates at either end. Great face plates of clear substance, through which Walkaway could train his turret eyes, and see the universe as it whirled by in not–space. The drive apertures were set at angles around the thick trunk of the ship, and there were no sleeping compartments, no galley, no chairs, nothing a metal servant would find useless.

The ship W–1 blasted free of Bounce Point on March 24th, 2111, its sole occupant a robot named Walkaway, whose face was a triple–turret tri–vid camera, and whose mind was the mind of a metal man with initiative. A certain initiative that only one man knew existed.

The ship left on March 24th. On March 31st, Leon Packett gripped a pair of heavy scissors and thrust them deep into his neck.

His will was a masterpiece of maudlin self–pity; but it released Walkaway from all human obligations, setting him
in toto
free. He was a singular now. Not an invention, but a civilian employee of the military Guard. He was to receive payment per diem for his work, and his accounts were to be handled by the Frericks Foundation.

Whatever Walkaway earned, remained his own. The ship went out on March 24th 2111. It returned three hundred and sixty–five years later.

And the future began.

Oh, Lord! The records were covered with dust. But valid, that was the rub. The Frericks Foundation had sunk in its own mismanagement, and a pleasure sanctuary had risen on its whited bones. The New Portion was now called the Underside, for tiers had risen high on high to the fiftieth level above that tier. Now there was a planet–wide government, and the ship W–1 had become a legend. The robot Walkaway had become a myth. The ship had never been heard from again, and as will happen, with all cultures, time had passed the concept of star travel by.

There was a broken–nosed statue of Leon Packett on the third tier, many miles from where the Frericks Foundation had stood. A statue that called him one of the great inventors of all time and all Mankind. There were no scissors in the statue.

When the ship came down past the Moon, and its warning gear telemetered out the recog–signals, the Earth Central control tower was lost in disbelief. A sloe–eyed brunette who was in charge of deciphering and matching recog–signals with the call letters of those ships out, called for a checker. Her section chief, a woman who had been on the job for eighteen years, matched the recog–signals, and turned to the younger girl with a word lost on her lips.

The call went in to Guard Central immediately.

They denied landing co–ordinates to the W–1 and held it aspace till they had found the records in the sub–cellar of the pleasure sanctuary on the third level. When they had the files, they knew the story completely, and they sent word to berth–in the W–1.

Walkaway looked the same.

Huge and graceful, his face vaguely human, his body a sort of homo sapiens plus, he slid down a nylex rope from the cargo aperture of the sundial–shaped ship. He had not bothered to lower the landing ramp. As he came down the single strand, his metallic reflection shone in the smooth landing–jack's surface. The reflection of Walkaway shone down and down and over again down as he slid quickly to the pad.

They watched, as they might watch a legend materialize. This was the fabled robot that had gone out to seek the stars in Carina, and had returned. Three hundred and sixty–five years the W–1 had been away, and now it had returned. What would the vid–cameras of this perambulating robot show? What wonders awaited man, now that his interest was roused in the immensities of space? The Guard watched, ranked around the pad, as Walkaway slid down the nylex rope. The great sundial–shaped ship held high above them — unlike any other of the sleek vessels in the yard — tripod poised on its high–reaching legs.

Then the robot touched Earth, and a shout went up.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill . . .

Three hundred and sixty–five years. No one was left who remembered this creature of flawless metal. No one who had seen Walkaway go out on the shuttle to Bounce Point.

Bounce Point, itself now two hundred years dust. Gone in the struggle for the Outer Cold Ones.

The robot came across the landing pad, his shining feet bright against the blackened pad–rock; his close–up turret-camera humming very quietly, taking in the reception ceremony for posterity.

Before the Guard representative could issue forth with the practiced phrases of a hundred other receptions, the robot said clearly, “It is good to be back. Where is Leon Packett?”

How strange it was — they said later — a legend stood asking them about another legend. Paul Bunyan inquiring after Zeus. What could they say? Few of them even knew of the man named Leon Packett. Those who knew, were vague where he was concerned. After all, three hundred and sixty–five years. The Earth had changed.

“I asked: where is Leon Packett? Which of you is from the Frericks Foundation?”

There were no answers. And then someone in the front ranks of the Guard, someone who knew his history, said: “You have been gone three hundred years and more, robot.”

“Leon Packett . . . ?”

“Is dead,” finished the Guardsman. “Long dead. Where have you been so long?”

And a circuit closed as data was fed to Walkaway.

And the future was assured.

Loneliness. Leon Packett had done his work well. Had they not tried to save a buck — actually, eleven million bucks — the wonderful glitch would not have escaped their notice. Taking Walkaway back to the drawing boards would have shown them what Leon Packett had actually accomplished. He had freed the robot's soul completely. Not only legally, but in actuality. Walkaway felt great sadness. There had only been one other who knew his inner feelings. That had been Leon Packett. There had been empathy between them. The man a bit mad, the robot a bit man. They had spent evenings together, as two childhood friends might have; the man and the faceless metal creature, product of the man's mind. They had not talked much, but a word had brought understanding of concepts, of emotions:

“All of them.”

The robot immobile, answering metallically, “Power.”

“Someday, someday . . . ”

“Checks.”

“Balances. Oh, Walkaway. Someday, just someday!”

“I know.”

The nights had passed restlessly for Packett, while the sickness within him festered. The robot had been constructed in the image of the man. Seeing everything through its vid–eyes, hearing everything through its pickups, but saying little, working hard. Then Packett had known he would die, and Walkaway would live on. An extension of himself; the sword he would someday wield.

He had worked long into the night, foreseeing where others would not foresee, could not foresee, though they had the knowledge. For Leon Packett had been gifted. Sick, but gifted, and he had left his curse, left his justice, left his vengeance, to live on after he was gone.

Walkaway learned of Leon Packett's death, and the circuit Packett had tampered with, that he had wanted to close at the knowledge of his death, snapped to with a mental thud that only Walkaway felt, that the universe was soon to know.

The robot turned to the Guardsmen and made the one request no one would have considered, the one request that was his legally to make:

“Pay me my wages.”

Three hundred and sixty–five years on Earth. Nine months and fifteen days in space. The warp–drive had been better than ghosts had thought. Memories of McCollum and his fellows from MIT lived within the force bead, and had given it power. Better, far better, it had been, than their wildest imaginings. But Einstein had been correct. Mass, infinity, time zero. He had been correct, and Walkaway had earned three hundred and sixty–five years worth of wages. Per diem. Plus travel pay according to military regulations. They could not withhold it on grounds that he was using military transportation; Leon Packett had seen to that: Walkaway was a private citizen.

Plus interest accrued.

The sum was staggering. The sum was unbelievable. The sum could, would,
must
bankrupt the Earth government. It was unheard–of. The Prelate convened, and the arguments raged, but Walkaway needed no defense. He merely requested: “Pay me my wages.” And they had to do it.

Oh, they tried to dodge their way out of it. They tried to ensnare him in legalities, but he was a man of alumasteel, and legalities could not affect him.

The circuit had closed, and his life's plan was set. In the mind of Walkaway burned the conscience and soul of his creator. Leon Packett was not dead. In his creation was re–born the intense, vibrant hatred of power and government and authority. In Walkaway was the perfect weapon; indestructible, uncaring, human as human it need be, inhuman as inhuman it
must
be, to bring about the downfall of that which Packett had despised.

Fifteen years in a cellar laboratory had carried forth for over three hundred years, and the future was molded on printed circuits.

Finally, they acceded. They paid him his wages. The government of Earth was bankrupted. The world belonged to a man of alumasteel. It was no longer Earth. Had he wished, he might have named it Walkaway's World.

For such it was.

Leon Packett had foreseen much. He had applied Einstein's equations, and he had known what would happen. The scientists of the Frericks Foundation had known, also, and they had considered it all. But the job had had to be done, in that era before Man had turned inward once more. They had feared what might happen, but not considered it an inevitability. They had looked on it the way the farmer looks on earthquake. Yes, it might happen, but that would be an act of God, not a thing that must be.

But they had not considered Leon Packett. He had taken steps. He had altered his creation, and made it want its pay, when it knew he was dead. For dead he was dead, and alive he was dead. But in the soul of Walkaway he lived again.

So he had created an act of God.

Twisted in thought, crying in the darkness of his tormented mind, Leon Packett had changed the future. Changed it so irrevocably, evened the score so beautifully, Man would remember and curse and live with his name forever. They had known of the possibility, and they had tried to prevent it.

“Let us take Walkaway back to the drawing boards,” McCollum — that shadow lost in the past — had cried. But Leon Packett had overruled him, “No!”

He would not let his name and his future be stolen from him. There was no need for him to go on living out a worthless life. That was bitterness. He had a tool that would and could and needed to drive forward to his ordained destiny. He had Walkaway, and though they suspected what might be, what could be, they never thought it
needed
to be. They figured without the drive and thirst of Walkaway's master. They figured without the hatred of a man for himself and for all other men.

Walkaway wanted his wages.

He got them, by getting the Earth.

There was not that much money in the world. Nor was there that much property. But there was the government, and soon Walkaway was the government.

That was the future Leon Packett built for himself, as the shrine of his memory.

Walkaway was not vindictive.

But Leon Packett was.

There haven't been many changes. Not many. Not for us. It has been the same for a very long time.

Walkaway was fair, and carried forth Packett's desires in the only way an alumasteel man could.

Changes? No, not many.

But you'll forgive me, of course. I must hurry now. I'm quite overdue.

I should have been at my lubrication hours ago.

Man alone. Man trapped by his own nature and the limits of the world around him. Man against Man. Man against Nature. All of these inevitably come down to the essential question of how courageous a man can be in a time of massive peril. They all come down to how a man can survive, by strength of arm, by fleetness of foot, and most of all, by inventiveness of intellect. This has been the subject of much that I have written, perhaps because I see my Times and my culture in the most “hung–up” condition it has ever known. Each man, each thinking individual, for the first time in the history of the race, completely — or as near completely as prejudiced mass media will allow — aware of the forces hurling him into the future. The Bomb, ready to go whenever the finger jumps to the proper button, the ethics slowly but steadily deteriorating, the morality finding its lowest common level, and each man, each thinking individual, virtually helpless before the fluxes and flows of civilization and herd instinct. Yet, is he really alone? Ever? Or is the imagination and fierce drive to survive a tenacious linkage among us all? And if it is, then are we not brothers to the man who had

There was a patch of Fluhs growing out beyond the spikes, and I tried to cultivate them, and bring them around, but somehow they weren't drawing enough, and they died off before they could mature. I needed that air, too. My sac was nearly half–empty. My head was starting to hurt again. It had been night for three months at that time.

My world is a small one. Not large enough to hold an atmosphere any normal Earthman could breathe, not small enough to have none and be totally airless. My world is the sole planet of a red sun, and it has two moons, each one of which serves to eclipse my world's sun for six of the eighteen months. I have light for six months, dark for twelve. I call my world Hell.

When I first came here, I had a name, and I had a face and I even had a wife. My wife died when the ship blew up, and my name died slowly over the ten years I have lived here, and my face — well, the less I remember, the easier it is for me.

Oh, I don't complain. It hasn't been easy here for me, but I've managed, and what can I say? I'm here and I'm alive as best I can be here, and what there is, there is. But what there is not, is greater than mere complaining could bring back.

The first time I saw my world was as a small egg of light in a plot tank on the ship I shared with my wife. “Do you think that has anything for us?” I asked her.

At first it was good to remember her, for when I did, a sweetness came to me, burning away my tears and my hate. At first. “I don't know, Tom, maybe.” That was what she said. “Maybe.” That was the sweet word, the way she said it. She always had a soft blonde way of saying
maybe
that made me want to wonder.

“The ore hold could do with something to chew on,” I gibed, and she smiled with her full lips and her teeth that gently nuzzled her lower lip. “Have to pay for these damn honeymoons of yours somehow.”

I kissed her playfully, for we were often happy like that; simply happy, by being together. Together. What that meant to me, I never quite knew, happy as I was. Our enjoyment of one another was so uncomplicated that it never struck me how it could be with her gone.

Then we passed through that fog of subatomic particles that float beyond the orbit of Firstmoon, and though they did not register on the tank, they were there and they were here and gone. Leaving in their wake a million tiny invisible holes in the hull of the ship. The holes would not have leaked enough air in a month to cause my wife or myself any discomfort, but they had pierced the drive chamber, also. The particles were not rock, but something else, perhaps even contra–terrene, and what they did to the drive chambers I will never know. For the ship lost power and slewed off toward this, my world, and miles above the surface they exploded.

My wife died, then, and I saw her body as I was whirled away in the safety section of the cab. I was safe, with great tanks of oxygen strapped to my hutch, and my wife was still there in the companionway between the metal walls. In the companionway between the galley and the cab, where she had gone to prepare me coffee.

She was still there, her arms outstretched to me, her skin quite blue — excuse me, it, it hurts still — as I was whirled away and down. I saw her that once.

My world is a harsh world. No clouds fleece its twelve–month black skies. No water runs across its surface. But then, water is no problem for me. I have the circulator, which takes my refuse, and turns it into drinkable water. There is a strong iron taste to the recirculated water, but that doesn't bother me too much.

It's the air that I have trouble getting. At least that was the case before I discovered the Fluhs had what I needed. I'll tell you about it, and about what has happened to my face; I'm frightened.

Of course I had to live.

Not at all because I wanted to live; when you have been a space bum as long as me, and nothing to moor you to one rock, and then along comes a woman who dips up life in her eyes and hands and does it all for you — and then she is taken away so quickly . . .

But I had to live. Simply because I had air in the cab, and a pressure–suit and food and the circulator. I could subsist on these for quite a while.

So I lived on Hell.

I woke and went through enough hours of nothingness to make me weary, and then I slept again, and woke when my dreams grew too crimson and too loud, repeating the tracks of the “day” before. Soon I grew bored with my life in the cab, close and solitary as it was, and decided to take a walk on the surface of this world.

I slipped into my air–suit, not bothering to put on the pressure shell. There was barely enough gravity on the planet to keep me comfortable, though occasionally I got stiff pains in my chest. And with the heating circuits pressed into the material of the air–suit, I was in no real danger. I strapped the oxygen unit to my back, and slipped the bubble onto the yoke, dogging it down over my head with ease. Then I inserted the hose between oxygen unit and bubble and sealed it tightly with a wrench, so I would lose no air from leakage.

Then I went out.

It was twilight, as the sky dimmed on Hell. I had had three months of light already, since I had landed in the safety hatch, and I assumed perhaps two months of light had passed before I came. That left me with a month, roughly, before Secondmoon slipped across the face of the tiny red sun which I had not named. Even now, Secondmoon was coming across the horizon, and I knew it would be darkness for a full six months by that moon, then another six from Firstmoon, then light again for a brief six.

It had not been difficult to chart orbits and eclipse periods during the past three months. What else had I to do?

I started walking. It wasn't difficult, and I found that by taking long hops, I could cover distances three times as quickly as if I had been on Earth.

The planet was nearly barren. No great forests, no streams or oceans, no plains with grain standing in them, no birds, and no other life but mine and —

When I first saw them, I was certain they were trumpet flowers, for they had the characteristic bell–shaped perianth with delicate stamen projecting slightly from the cup. But as I drew nearer I realized nothing so Earth–like — even in outward appearance — could occur here. These were not flowers, and on the spot, in the muffled–breathing of my helmet, I called them Fluhs.

They were a brilliant orange on the outside of the bell, fading down into a bluish–orange and then a simple marine blue on the stem. Inside the cups they were not so orange as they seemed golden, and the blue of the pistils was topped by anthers of orange. Quite colorful they were, and pleasant to look upon.

There were perhaps a hundred of these plants, growing at the base of rock formations that were quite unnatural: tall and leaning at angles, and all smooth and sharp–edged, like spikes, flattened off at the tops. Not so much like rocks, but like the image of salt crystals or glass, under ultra–magnification. The entire area was covered with these formations, and with an instant's loss of reality, I seemed to see myself as a microscopic being, surrounded by great flat–edged, flat–topped crystals that were in reality merely dust or micro–specks.

Then my perspective returned, and I stepped closer to the Fluhs, to examine them more closely, for this was the only other life that had managed to exist on Hell, apparently, drawing sustenance from the thin, nitrogen–laden atmosphere.

I leaned over to stare deeper into the trumpet–blossoms, resting on one of the slanting pillars of pseudo–rock for support. That was one of my first mistakes, nearly fatal, and intended to color my entire life on Hell.

The pillar crashed — it was a semi–porous volcanic formation, almost scoria–like in composition — and loosened other rocks that had rested on it. I fell forward, directly atop the Fluhs, and the last thing I felt was my oxygen helmet shattering about my head.

Then the blackness that was not as deep as space slid down over me.

I should have been dead. There was no reason why I should not have been dead. But I was living; I was . . . breathing! Can you understand that? I should have been with my wife, but I was alive.

My face was pressed into the Fluhs.

I was drawing oxygen from them.

I had stumbled and fallen and cracked open my helmet, and should have died, but because of strange plants that sucked the nitrogen from the thin atmosphere, circulated it and cast it back out as oxygen, I was still alive. I cursed the Fluhs for depriving me of quick, unknowing surcease. I had come so close to joining her, and had lost the chance. I wanted to stagger away from the Fluhs — out into the open where they could not give me life — and gasp away my stolen life. But something stopped me. I was never a religious man, and I am not now. But there seemed to be something greater in what had happened. I can't explain it. I just
knew
there was a Chance that had thrown me down into that patch of Fluhs.

I lay there, breathing deeply.

There was a soft membrane around the base of the pistils, what must have held in the oxygen, allowing it to sift out slowly. They were intricate and wonderful plants.

… and there was the smell of midnight.

I can't describe it any more clearly. It was not a sweet smell, nor was it a sour smell. It was a tender, almost fragile odor that reminded me of one midnight when I had first married her, and we were living in Minnesota. Crisp, and pure and uplifting that midnight had been, when our love had transcended even the restrictions of marriage, when we first realized we were more in love than in love with love itself. Does that sound foolish or confused? No, to me it was perfectly clear. And so was the smell of midnight from the Fluhs.

It was that smell perhaps, that made me go on living.

That, and the fact that my face had begun to drain.

As I lay there, I had time to think about what this meant: the bottleneck in oxygen lack is the brain. After five minutes of oxygen starvation, the brain is irreversibly damaged. But with these Fluhs, I could wander about my planet without a helmet — were I able to find them everywhere in such abundance.

As I lay there thinking, gathering strength for the run back to the ship, I felt my face draining. It was as though I had a great boil or pus–bag on my left cheek, and it was sucking blood down down into it. I felt my cheek, and yes, even through the glove I could feel a swelling. I grew terrified then, and plucking a handful of Fluhs — close to the bottom of their stems — I thrust my face into them, and ran frantically back to the ship.

Once inside, the Fluhs wilted and, falling down over my fist, they shriveled. Their brilliant colors faded, and they turned gray as brain matter. I threw them from me and they lay on the deckplate for a few minutes before — they crumbled to a fine ash.

I pulled off my air–suit and my gloves, and ran to the circulator, for it was constructed of burnished plasteel, and my reflection lived there clearly. My left cheek was terribly inflamed. I gave a short, sharp squeal of terror and pawed at my face, but unlike a pimple or boil, there was no soreness, no pain. Just the constant draining feeling.

What was there to do? I waited.

In a week, the sac had taken shape almost completely. My face was like no human face, drawn down and puffed out on the left side so that my left eye had been pulled into a mere slit of light shining through. It was like a gigantic goiter, but a goiter that was not on the neck, but my face. The sac ended just at the jawbone, and it did not impair my breathing a bit. But my mouth had been dragged down with it, and when I opened it, I found I had a great cavernous maw instead of the firm lips I had once known. Otherwise, my face was completely normal. I was a half–beast. My right side was normal, and my left was grotesquely pulled into a drooping, rubbery parody of humanity. I could not bear to look on myself for more than an instant or two, each “day.” The flaming redness of it had gone away, as had the draining, and I did not understand it for many weeks.

Until I ventured once more onto the surface of Hell.

The helmet could not be repaired, of course, so I used the one that my wife had used when she was with me. That set me thinking again, and later, when I had steadied myself, and stopped crying, I went out.

It was inevitable that I should return to the spot where my deformity had first occurred. I made the spikes, as I had now named the rock formations, without event, and sat down among a patch of Fluhs. If I had drawn off their life–giving oxygen, they seemed no worse for it, for they had continued to grow in brilliance and were, if anything, even more beautiful.

I stared at them for a long time, trying to apply what smattering of knowledge I had about the physics and chemistry of life to what had happened. One thing at least, was obvious, I had undergone a fantastic mutation.

A mutation that was essentially impossible from what Man knew of life and its construction. What might, under exaggerated conditions, have become a permanent mutation, through generations of special breeding, had happened to me almost overnight. I tried to reason it out:

Even on a molecular scale, structure is inextricably related to function. I considered the structure of proteins, for in that direction, I felt, lay at least a partial answer to my deformity.

Finally, I removed the helmet, and bent down to the Fluhs once more. I sucked air from them, and this time felt a great light–headedness. I continued drawing, first from one flower and then the next, till I knew. My sac was full. It all became reasonably clear to me, then. The smell of midnight. There was more than just odor there. I had assimilated bacteria from the Fluhs; bacteria that had attacked the stablizing enzymes in my breathing system. Viruses perhaps, or even rickettsia, that had — for want of a clearer term —
softened
my proteins and reshaped them to best allow me to make use of these Fluhs.

To allow me to oxygen–suck, as I had been doing, developing a bigger chest or larger lungs would have done me no good. But a balloon–like organ, capable of storing oxygen under pressure . . .
that
was something else again. When I sucked from the plants, oxygen bled slowly from the blood haemoglobin into the storage sac, and after a while I would be oxygen–full.