Hunt the Space-Witch! (7 page)

“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?”

“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 then, 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.

The robot spoke. “It is time for you to return, now. You have served your task well, and now you may return to your earlier life.”

Harkins was too exhausted to feel relief. At the moment his only concern was resting a while.

“Are you to leave?” Katha asked suddenly.

“I am going to go home,” Harkins said.

A tear glistened in her eye—the first tear, Harkins thought curiously, that he had seen in any eye since his arrival. “But—how can you leave us?” she asked.

“I—” He stopped. She was right. He had thought of himself as a mere pawn, but to these people he was a ruler. He could not leave now. These people were savages, and needed guidance. The great computer was theirs to use—but they might never learn to use it.

He turned to the robot. “The job is
not
done,” he said. “It's just beginning.” He managed a tired smile and said, “I'm staying here.”

Spawn of the Deadly Sea

Chapter One

The Sea-Lord ship was but a blurred dot on the horizon, a tiny squib of color against the endless roiling green of the mighty sea. It would be a long time before the men of the sea would draw into the harbor of Vythain—yet the people of the floating city were already congealed with terror.

The whisper shuddered through the city:
“The Sea-Lords come!
” Old Lackthan in the spy-tower saw the black sails first, and relayed the word down to those below.
“The Sea-Lords come!
”

In the streets of the city, life froze suddenly. The purchasing offish and the scraping of scales ceased, the writing of books and the making of songs. The Sea-Lords were making their way across the panthalassa, the great sea that covered the world, heading for Vythain to collect their annual tribute.

The hundred thousand people of Vythain awaited their coming with fear. One—
one
—stood on the concrete pier, down where the oily slick of the sea licked angrily against the base of the floating city, and stared outward with open, unashamed curiosity.

For Dovirr Stargan, this was a long-awaited day. He was eighteen, now; tall and broad and with the strength of a young shark. Looking out across the darkness of the sea, he scowled impatiently as the Sea-Lord vessel slowly crawled toward Vythain.

From somewhere above came three shrill trumpet-blasts. Dovirr glanced up. At the parapet atop the sweeping flat face of the Council House, Councilman Morgrun was giving the warning.