Peace on Earth (18 page)

I don’t know exactly why, but I picked up the corpse and threw it over my shoulder, it didn’t weigh more than ten or fifteen pounds here, and beat a rather awkward tactical retreat, its long legs dragging on the ground and catching on stones. I had to go very slowly to keep from falling. The slope was not that steep but I wasn’t sure whether it would be better to walk on the slippery glass-rock or over the rubble which rolled and shifted at every step. Because of this difficulty I went in the wrong direction and found myself not on the dune again but about a quarter of a mile to the west of it, between large round rocks that looked like monoliths. I put the corpse down on a flat place and sat to catch my breath before I tried raising Wivitch. I looked for the micropes but the glittering cloud of them was nowhere to be seen. And still I heard no voices though I should have by now. The clatter of the Geiger counter in my helmet slowed until it was like individual grains of sand falling on a drum. Then I heard a muffled voice and went numb, because it wasn’t the base. Incoherent and hoarse, yet I caught two words: “My brother … my brother…” A moment of silence, and again: “My brother…”

“Who is that?” I wanted to shout but didn’t dare. I sat hunched, feeling the sweat break out on my forehead, and the voice again was in my helmet. “Come, my brother. Come to me. Without fear. I do not wish you harm, my brother. Come. We will not fight. Do not fear. I do not wish to fight. Come. Let us be brothers. Let us help each other, my brother.” A snapping sound, and the same voice but in a completely different tone, sharp, barking: “Put down your weapon! Put down your weapon! Or I’ll fire! Don’t try to run! Turn around! Hands up! Both hands! And don’t move! Don’t move!”

Something snapped again and the first voice returned, weak and hesitant: “My brother, come. Let us be brothers. Help me. We will not fight.” It was the corpse talking, that was clear. It lay where I had dropped it, and looked like a stepped-on spider with its abdomen split and its legs tangled and its empty eyesockets staring at the sun. It didn’t move but something inside it was addressing me in a loop. A song in two keys, first come my brother and then the barking. That’s its program, I thought. Whether manikin or robot, it was designed first to lure a man, a soldier, then take him prisoner or kill him. It couldn’t do anything now, all that was left in it was an unburned scrap of the program playing in a loop. But why by radio? If it was built to fight on Earth, surely it would speak in a regular voice. I didn’t understand the radio. There were no live soldiers on the moon, and a robot wouldn’t be taken in by this. Or would it? It just didn’t make sense. I looked at the blackened skull, the twisted hands and melted fingers, the torso ripped open, but now without the instinctive pity of a moment ago. With disgust, rather, with ill will, even though the thing was not to blame, it had been programmed this way. How can one be indignant with a bunch of circuits?

When it began its my-brother routine again, I spoke to it, but it didn’t hear me. Or gave no sign of hearing me. I stood, my shadow fell on its head, and it stopped in the middle of a word. I stepped back, and it continued. So it was activated by the sun. I wondered what to do next. This manikin-trap was of little interest, too primitive to be much of a “war machine.” And even the lunar armorers must consider these long-legged figures obsolete and worthless, seeing as they used them to test the effects of a nuclear hit. Because its lifeless refrain made it hard for me to concentrate, but to tell the truth it may have been for another reason, I picked up some larger pieces of rubble and threw them at the thing’s head and then its torso, as if to bury it. It fell silent, and all I heard was a thin squeaking. At first I thought the squeaking was from the corpse, and looked around for more rocks, but then I realized it was Morse code.—t-i-c-h-y—l-i-s-t-e-n—t-h-i-s—i-s—c-o-n-t-r-o-l—s-a-t-e-l-l-i-t-e—m-a-l-f-u-n-c-t-i-o-n—s-o-u-n-d—w-i-l-l—r-e-t-u-r-n—s-o-o-n—w-a-i-t—t-i-c-h-y.

So one of the Trojan satellites between us had gone on the fritz. They would fix it soon, sure, I thought sarcastically. I couldn’t reply, there was no way. For the last time I looked at the charred remains, and at the ruins white in the sun on the other side of the dune, and I ran my eyes over the black sky trying in vain to find the micropes. I walked toward a large convex wall of rock that rose from the sand like the gray hulk of a whale. I made for a break in the rock, which was black as tar in shadow, like the mouth of a cave. I blinked. Someone was standing there. A human figure, almost. Short, broad-shouldered, in a gray-green spacesuit. I raised an arm, thinking it was again my reflection and that the color of the suit was only from a shadow, but the figure did not move an inch. I hesitated, perhaps from fear or some premonition. But I hadn’t come here to run, besides where would I run to? I stepped forward. He looked just like a squat man.

“Hello,” came his voice. “Hello… Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said without much enthusiasm.

“Come over here… I have a radio too!”

That sounded pretty idiotic, but I went to him. There was something military in the style of his suit. Shining metal bands across his chest. His hands held nothing. Well, that was something, I thought, approaching but more slowly. He came toward me and lifted his arms in a simple gesture of greeting an old friend.

“Welcome! Welcome! How good of you to come at last! We can talk … you and I together … about bringing peace to the world…”

He spoke in an effusive, vibrant, strangely penetrating voice as he came toward me through the deep sand, arms held out, and his whole bearing expressed such cordiality that I didn’t know what to think. He was now only a few steps from me, the dark glass of his helmet blazing with the sun. He embraced me, hugged me, and we stood that way on the gray slope. I tried to see his face but saw nothing, even as close as a hand’s breadth, because the glass was opaque. It wasn’t even glass, more a mask covered with glass. How could he see me then?

“You’ll feel at home here with us, old friend…” He bumped my helmet with his as if trying to kiss me on both cheeks. “At home … we don’t want war, we are peace-loving, meek, you’ll see…” And with that he kicked me so hard that I fell on my back, and jumped on me, both knees in my stomach. I saw stars, literally, the stars of the black lunar sky, while my “friend” held my head down with his left hand and with his right pulled off his metal bands which themselves twisted into horseshoe hoops. I said nothing, dazed, as he fastened my arms to the ground one at a time with the hoops, driving them in with powerful, unhurried blows of his fist, and continued:

“At home, old friend… We’re simple folk, kind, I like you and you like me, old friend…”

“And not ‘my brother’?” I asked, now unable to move either arms or legs.

“Brother?” he said thoughtfully, as if trying out the word. “So be it, brother! I’m good, you’re good, brother for brother!”

He stood, quickly and expertly tapped my sides, legs, found my pockets, took out everything I had, the flat box of tools, the Geiger counter, the folding shovel, and frisked me again, harder this time, especially under the arms, and tried to work his fingers into the top of my boots, and during this careful search of my person not for a moment did he stop talking.

“My brother, you said. Maybe yes, maybe no. Did one mother give birth to us? Ah, mother. Motherhood. Mother is a saint, and you’re a saint too, brother, no weapon on you, none. A clever brother … just taking a little stroll, to pick mushrooms. Lots of boletus here, but the forest is hard to see. Yes, old friend… I’ll make it better for you soon, all better. We’re simple folk, meek, and we will inherit the earth.”

He took a kind of flat knapsack off his back and opened it. Sharp instruments gleamed. He hefted one in his hand, put it back, selected another, powerful shears like the cutters used by soldiers in battle to get through barbed wire, and turned to me, the blades sparkling in the sun. He sat on my stomach, lifted the tool, and with the words “To your health” thrust it into my chest. It hurt but not much. Evidently my remote had pain dampers. I knew that this lunar friend of mine would open me like a fish and that I should return to the ship and leave him the body to cut up, but I was so fascinated by the contrast between his words and his actions that I lay as if mesmerized.

“Why don’t you speak?” he said, slicing through my suit with a crackling sound. Excellent shears, made of incredibly hard steel.

“I can say something?” I asked.

“Go ahead!”

“Hyena.”

“What?”

“Jackal.”

“You insult me, my friend? Not nice. Not friend but enemy. Treacherous. You came here unarmed to confuse me. I wished you well, but an enemy must be searched. My duty. That’s the rule. I was attacked. With no declaration of war you stepped upon this sacred ground. Your own fault. My brother, hah. Brother of a dog! Worse than a dog, and you’ll regret calling me hyena and jackal, but not for long, because memory ends with life.”

The last of my chest welds gave way, and he began to break and pry apart things. He looked inside and hmmed.

“Interesting little gadgets,” he said, getting up. “Fancy stuff. Our experts will figure it out. You wait here. But where can you go? Nowhere. You’re ours now, my friend!”

The ground shook. Turning my head to the side as far as I could, I saw others like him. They marched in formation, goose-stepping the dust up. My executioner stood at attention, preparing to make his report, I supposed.

“Tichy, answer, where are you?” roared in my ears. “The sound is back. Wivitch here. Control. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

Some of this must have been overheard by the soldiers, because they broke into a run.

“Do you know what sector you’re in?” Wivitch asked.

“Yes. I’ve just realized. They’ve taken me prisoner! I’m cut open!”

“Which country?” Wivitch began, but my executioner drowned him out.

“Emergency!” he shouted. “Seize him!”

“Tichy!” cried Wivitch from far away. “Don’t let them take you!”

I understood. Letting Earth’s latest technology fall into robot hands was to be avoided at all cost. I couldn’t move even a finger, but there was still a way. I bit down as hard as I could, heard a snap like an overwound spring, and was plunged into total darkness. Instead of sand under my back was the soft upholstery of my chair. I was on the ship. A little dizzy, I couldn’t find the right button immediately, but then saw it. I broke the plastic cover and hit the red button with my fist so the remote would not be examined by them. Below, a pound of ecrasite blew it to smithereens. I felt sorry for the LEM but I had to do it. And so ended the second reconnaissance.

Of the next ten landings I have memories as fragmentary as they are unpleasant. The third reconnaissance lasted the longest, three hours, even though I came down in the middle of a pitched battle between robots that looked like prehistoric lizards. They were so busy fighting, they didn’t notice me when I descended on the battlefield in a halo of fire, white as an angel though without wings. Still aloft, I understood why this region had seemed empty from the ship. The robots were camouflaged; on their backs they had a knobby design that was like scattered stones in sand. They slithered with terrible speed. At first I didn’t know what to do; there were no bullets whizzing past, no explosives, but the laser flashes were blinding. I lumbered quickly to some large white rocks, because this was the only cover in reach. Peering out from behind a boulder, I watched the battle.

I couldn’t tell who was fighting whom. The lizard robots, which resembled caimans, were attacking up a shallow slope in my direction, hopping. But the enemy seemed to be among them, in their ranks, perhaps the enemy had parachuted in, because I saw some lizards struggling with others and they looked exactly the same. At one point three that were pursuing one came quite close. They caught it but couldn’t hold it because it shook off all its legs and escaped, writhing like a snake. I hadn’t expected such primitive combat, with tails and legs being tom off, and I waited for them to get around to me, but somehow in the heat of battle I was ignored. A line of soldiers advanced on the slope, spitting laser fire from mouths funnel-shaped like blunderbusses. But something odd was happening higher up on the slope. The robots in front, covered by the fire of those behind, slowed about halfway up and began to change color. Their sandy backs darkened, then were covered with gray smoke as though from an invisible flame, and then they ignited. But there were no flashes from the other side, so it could hardly have been lasers. The slope was now strewn with charred and melted machines, but new troops came and went rushing to their doom.

It was only when I turned on my telesights that I saw what they were attacking. At the top of the hill was something huge and unmoving like a fortress, but a peculiar fortress because it was all mirrors. Or maybe not mirrors but screens of some kind, which in the top half showed the black sky with stars and in the bottom the sandy slope strewn with debris. Unless they were both mirrors and screens at the same time. The lasers had no effect on the fortress, were deflected, meanwhile lower, where the biggest pile of robot corpses lay, the temperature of the rock was over three and a half thousand degrees according to the bolometer in my helmet. A force field heating by inductíon or something like that, I thought, pressing tight to the boulder that was my shield. The lizards attacked, and the mirror-screen thing surrounded itself with an invisible wall of heat, fine, meanwhile what was I supposed to do, defenseless as an infant caught in a wave of charging tanks? I didn’t have to report all this to Control because my third remote was followed by a special rocket that looked like an ordinary rock. It impersonated a meteor, except that this meteor didn’t fall but hung two miles above me.

Something touched my thigh. I looked down and froze. It was one of the legs of the robot that a moment ago had turned into a snake. The leg had inched its way to the boulder where I was hiding and had come upon me. In this blindly twitching thing with three sharp claws and sandy camouflage there was something both repulsive and pathetic. It tried to attach itself to my thigh but of course couldn’t, finding no purchase. I picked it up with disgust and threw it as far from me as I could. It came back. So instead of observing the battle I had to fight with that leg, because it was trying to climb up me again, ineffectually, as if it was drunk. And now the others will come, I thought, and the situation will be really ridiculous. I threw it. At least Control was silent, because any conversation might be overheard, which would be bad for me. Crouching in the shadow of my boulder, I gripped my shovel and waited for the leg, and thought darkly that all I needed was for the damned thing to have some radio transmitter too. Contracting and lengthening in turn, it reached my knees because I was kneeling, and I held it down with one hand and with the other started chopping with the shovel. Instead of taking notes on robot warfare Ijon Tichy sits on the moon making lizard-leg hamburger. Wonderful. Finally I must have hit a sensitive spot because it rolled over and stiffened. I got up then and peered around the boulder.