The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (30 page)

Peyton was beginning to feel desperate. Characteristically the opposition had made him more determined than ever. Somehow he must discover how the Engineer was built. Otherwise he would waste all his life trying to match the genius of Thordarsen.

It was useless. The robot was one jump ahead of him.

‘You cannot make plans against me. If you do try to escape through that door, I shall throw this power unit at your legs. My probable error at this range is less than half a centimetre.’

One could not hide from the thought analysers. The plan had been scarcely half-formed in Peyton’s mind, but the Engineer knew it already.

Both Peyton and the Engineer were equally surprised by the interruption. There was a sudden flash of tawny gold, and half a ton of bone and sinew, travelling at forty miles an hour, struck the robot amidships.

For a moment there was a great flailing of tentacles. Then, with a sound like the crack of doom, the Engineer lay sprawling on the floor. Leo, licking his paws thoughtfully, crouched over the fallen machine.

He could not quite understand this shining animal which had been threatening his master. Its skin was the toughest he had encountered since a very ill-advised disagreement with a rhinoceros many years ago.

‘Good boy!’ shouted Peyton gleefully. ‘Keep him down!’

The Engineer had broken some of his larger limbs, and the tentacles were too weak to do any damage. Once again Peyton found his tool kit invaluable. When he had finished, the Engineer was certainly incapable of movement, though Peyton had not touched any of the neutral circuits. That, somehow, would have been rather too much like murder.

‘You can get off now, Leo,’ he said when the task was finished. The lion obeyed with poor grace.

‘I’m sorry to have to do this,’ said Peyton hypocritically, ‘but I hope you appreciate my point of view. Can you still speak?’

‘Yes,’ replied the Engineer. ‘What do you intend to do now?’

Peyton smiled. Five minutes ago, he had been the one to ask the question. How long, he wondered, would it take for the Engineer’s twin to arrive on the scene? Though Leo could deal with the situation if it came to a trial of strength, the other robot would have been warned and might be able to make things very unpleasant for them. It could, for instance, switch off the lights.

The glow tubes died and darkness fell. Leo gave a mournful howl of dismay. Feeling rather annoyed, Peyton drew his torch and twitched it on.

‘It doesn’t really make any difference to me,’ he said. ‘You might just as well switch them on again.’

The Engineer said nothing. But the glow tubes lit once more.

How on earth, thought Peyton, could you fight an enemy who could read your thoughts and could even watch you preparing your defences? He would have to avoid thinking of any idea that might react to his disadvantage, such as—he stopped himself just in time. For a moment he blocked his thoughts by trying to integrate Armstrong’s omega function in his head. Then he got his mind under control again.

‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘I’ll make a bargain with you.’

‘What is that? I do not know the word.’

‘Never mind,’ Peyton replied hurriedly. ‘My suggestion is this. Let me waken the men who are trapped here, give me your fundamental circuits, and I’ll leave without touching anything. You will have obeyed your builders’ orders and no harm will have been done.’

A human being might have argued over the matter, but not so the robot. Its mind took perhaps a thousandth of a second to weigh any situation, however involved.

‘Very well. I see from your mind that you intend to keep the agreement. But what does the word “blackmail” mean?’

Peyton flushed.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said hastily. ‘It’s only a common human expression. I suppose your—er—colleague will be here in a moment?’

‘He has been waiting outside for some time,’ replied the robot. ‘Will you keep your dog under control?’

Peyton laughed. It was too much to expect a robot to know zoology.

‘Lion, then,’ said the robot, correcting itself as it read his mind.

Peyton addressed a few words to Leo and, to make doubly sure, wound his fingers in the lion’s mane. Before he could frame the invitation with his lips, the second robot rolled silently into the room. Leo growled and tried to tug away, but Peyton calmed him.

In every respect Engineer II was a duplicate of its colleague. Even as it came toward him it dipped into his mind in the disconcerting manner that Peyton could never get used to.

‘I see that you wish to go to the dreamers,’ it said. ‘Follow me.’

Peyton was tired of being ordered around. Why didn’t the robots ever say ‘please’?

‘Follow me, please,’ repeated the machine, with the slightest possible accentuation.

Peyton followed.

Once again he found himself in the corridor with the hundreds of poppy-embossed doors—or a similar corridor. The robot led him to a door indistinguishable from the rest and came to a halt in front of it.

Silently the metal plate slid open, and, not without qualms, Peyton stepped into the darkened room.

On the couch lay a very old man. At first sight he seemed to be dead. Certainly his breathing had slowed to the point of cessation. Peyton stared at him for a moment. Then he spoke to the robot.

‘Waken him.’

Somewhere in the depths of the city the stream of impulses through a thought projector ceased. A universe that had never existed crumbled to ruins.

From the couch two burning eyes glowed up at Peyton, lit with the light of madness. They stared through him and beyond, and from the thin lips poured a stream of jumbled words that Peyton could barely distinguish. Over and over again the old man cried out names that must be those of people or places in the dream world from which he had been wrenched. It was at once horrible and pathetic.

‘Stop it!’ cried Peyton. ‘You are back in reality now.’

The glowing eyes seemed to see him for the first time. With an immense effort the old man raised himself.

‘Who are you?’ he quavered. Then, before Peyton could answer, he continued in a broken voice. ‘This must be a nightmare—go away, go away. Let me wake up!’

Overcoming his repulsion, Peyton put his hand on the emaciated shoulder.

‘Don’t worry—you are awake. Don’t you remember?’

The other did not seem to hear him.

‘Yes, it must be a nightmare—it must be! But why don’t I wake up? Nyran, Cressidor, where are you? I cannot find you!’

Peyton stood it as long as he could, but nothing he did could attract the old man’s attention again. Sick at heart, he turned to the robot.

‘Send him back.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Third Renaissance

Slowly the raving ceased. The frail body fell back on the couch, and once again the wrinkled face became a passionless mask.

‘Are they all as mad as this?’ asked Peyton finally.

‘But he is not mad.’

‘What do you mean? Of course he is!’

‘He has been entranced for many years. Suppose you went to a far land and changed your mode of living completely, forgetting all you had ever known of your previous life. Eventually you would have no more knowledge of it than you have of your first childhood.

‘If by some miracle you were then suddenly thrown back in time, you would behave in just that way. Remember, his dream life is completely real to him and he has lived it now for many years.’

That was true enough. But how could the Engineer possess such insight? Peyton turned to it in amazement, but as usual had no need to frame the question.

‘Thordarsen told me the other day while we were still building Comarre. Even then some of the dreamers had been entranced for twenty years.’

‘The other day?’

‘About five hundred years ago, you would call it.’

The words brought a strange picture into Peyton’s mind. He could visualise the lonely genius, working here among his robots, perhaps with no human companions left. All the others would long since have gone in search of their dreams.

But Thordarsen might have stayed on, the desire for creation still linking him to the world, until he had finished his work. The two engineers, his greatest achievement and perhaps the most wonderful feat of electronics of which the world had record, were his ultimate masterpieces.

The waste and the pity of it overwhelmed Peyton. More than ever he was determined that, because the embittered genius had thrown away his life, his work should not perish, but be given to the world.

‘Will all the dreamers be like this?’ he asked the robot.

‘All except the newest. They may still remember their first lives.’

‘Take me to one of them.’

The room they entered next was identical with the other, but the body lying on the couch was that of a man of no more than forty.

‘How long has he been here?’ asked Peyton.

‘He came only a few weeks ago—the first visitor we had for many years until your coming.’

‘Wake him, please.’

The eyes opened slowly. There was no insanity in them, only wonder and sadness. Then came the dawn of recollection, and the man half rose to a sitting position. His first words were completely rational.

‘Why have you called me back? Who are you?’

‘I have just escaped from the thought projectors,’ explained Peyton. ‘I want to release all who can be saved.’

The other laughed bitterly.

‘Saved! From what? It took me forty years to escape from the world, and now you would drag me back to it! Go away and leave me in peace!’

Peyton would not retreat so easily.

‘Do you think that this make-believe world of yours is better than reality? Have you no desire to escape from it at all?’

Again the other laughed, with no trace of humour.

‘Comarre is reality to me. The world never gave me anything, so why should I wish to return to it? I have found peace here, and that is all I need.’

Quite suddenly Peyton turned on his heels and left. Behind him he heard the dreamer fall back with a contented sigh. He knew when he had been beaten. And he knew now why he had wished to revive the others.

It had not been through any sense of duty, but for his own selfish purpose. He had wished to convince himself that Comarre was evil. Now he knew that it was not. There would always be, even in Utopia, some for whom the world had nothing to offer but sorrow and disillusion.

They would be fewer and fewer with the passage of time. In the dark ages of a thousand years ago most of mankind had been misfits of some sort. However splendid the world’s future, there would still be some tragedies—and why should Comarre be condemned because it offered them their only hope of peace?

He would try no more experiments. His own robust faith and confidence had been severely shaken. And the dreamers of Comarre would not thank him for his pains.

He turned to the Engineer again. The desire to leave the city had grown very intense in the last few minutes, but the most important work was still to be done. As usual, the robot forestalled him.

‘I have what you want,’ he said. ‘Follow me, please.’

It did not lead, as Peyton had half expected, back to the machine levels, with their maze of control equipment. When their journey had finished, they were higher than Peyton had ever been before, in a little circular room he suspected might be at the very apex of the city. There were no windows, unless the curious plates set in the wall could be made transparent by some secret means.

It was a study, and Peyton gazed at it with awe as he realised who had worked here many centuries ago. The walls were lined with ancient textbooks that had not been disturbed for five hundred years. It seemed as if Thordarsen had left only a few hours before. There was even a half-finished circuit pinned on a drawing board against the wall.

‘It almost looks as if he was interrupted,’ said Peyton, half to himself.

‘He was,’ answered the robot.

‘What do you mean? Didn’t he join the others when he had finished you?’

It was difficult to believe that there was absolutely no emotion behind the reply, but the words were spoken in the same passionless tones as everything else the robot had ever said.

‘When he had finished us, Thordarsen was still not satisfied. He was not like the others. He often told us that he had found happiness in the building of Comarre. Again and again he said that he would join the rest, but always there was some last improvement he wanted to make. So it went on until one day we found him lying here in this room. He had stopped. The word I see in your mind is “death,” but I have no thought for that.’

Peyton was silent. It seemed to him that the great scientist’s ending had not been an ignoble one. The bitterness that had darkened his life had lifted from it at the last. He had known the joy of creation. Of all the artists who had come to Comarre, he was the greatest. And now his work would not be wasted.

The robot glided silently toward a steel desk, and one of its tentacles disappeared into a drawer. When it emerged it was holding a thick volume, bound between sheets of metal. Wordlessly it handed the book to Peyton, who opened it with trembling hands. It contained many thousands of pages of thin, very tough material.

Written on the flyleaf in a bold, firm hand were the words:

Rolf Thordarsen
Notes on Subelectronics
Begun: Day 2, Month 13, 2598.

Underneath was more writing, very difficult to decipher and apparently scrawled in frantic haste. As he read, understanding came at last to Peyton with the suddenness of an equatorial dawn.

To the reader of these words:

I, Rolf Thordarsen, meeting no understanding in my own age, send this message into the future. If Comarre still exists, you will have seen my handiwork and must have escaped the snares I set for lesser minds. Therefore you are fitted to take this knowledge to the world. Give it to the scientists and tell them to use it wisely.

I have broken down the barrier between Man and Machine. Now they must share the future equally.

Peyton read the message several times, his heart warming toward his long-dead ancestor. It was a brilliant scheme. In this way, as perhaps in no other, Thordarsen had been able to send his message safely down the ages, knowing that only the right hands would receive it. Peyton wondered if this had been Thordarsen’s plan when he first joined the Decadents or whether he had evolved it later in his life. He would never know.