O Master Caliban (3 page)

Out of the silence, Shirvanian said, “I would—or if I couldn’t, which isn’t likely, I’d make the ergs do it for me.”

Mitzi shrieked, “You shut up, you dirty stupid brat, you can’t even keep your pants dry! You got us into this rotten mess!”

Koz reached over and slammed her on the side of the head so hard she went crashing against Joshua’s shoulder and knocked him off the bench.

Esther snaked out an arm like a steel cable, picked up Koz by the collar, and dumped him in the moss bin.

“All right, Esther,” said Sven.

Shirvanian burst into tears, Ardagh turned white, Koz and the others picked themselves up, spluttering.

Esther grabbed Shirvanian and wiped his face with the palms of her hands. “I didn’t do it!” he yelled. “They made me! LET ME GO!”

Koz brushed moss off, spitting. “You let him go and I’ll wring his neck for him!”

Joshua calmly found his seat on the bench again. “I thought you were committed to nonviolence.”

“I’m sick of you! I’m sick of this place!” Mitzi was shaking with tears of rage. “I hate you all!”

“You’re scared and tired,” Esther said, brushing up moss, straightening clothes, drying tears. She was crazy-clean, or perhaps a bit crazy from trying to keep clean in such a place. “Sven, it’s time to sleep.”

“Mutti, I’m scared and tired too. But I get more scared when I think ... Ardagh? Joshua? You seem to have your heads on. What is this? The ergs moved in on me tonight, your ship went the wrong way—and Shirvanian can operate interplanetary radio? What is this kid, ten years old?”

“I’m not stupid! I can operate a radio!”

Ardagh pulled her hands away from her face and the red welled into it.

“He’s got some kind of psi,” she whispered, “It works on machines ...” She looked around. “Don’t glare at me. We can’t muck it up any worse than we’ve done already.”

“Machines?” Sven stared down at Shirvanian, who had untangled himself from Esther and backed into a comer, red-eyed and pouting. “I’ve known a couple of ESPs—but machines?”

“He’s supposed to be a genius—”

“Genius idiot.” Mitzi, trembling, was trying to light a stick of kif.

“I’m not an idiot! I don’t wet my pants!”

“I’m glad of that,” Esther said. “We don’t have very good laundry service here.”

“What were you trying to do?”
Sven asked.

“Get away!” Koz was near tears himself. “We wanted to get away!” He added in weary disgust, ‘Why else do you think we’d have this brat with us?”

“But why?”

“Because we were so goddam tired of ...”

“Of what?” Esther rumpled her gleaming brow. “Tired of good food and clean beds and seeing everything in the Galaxy?”

“You wouldn’t understand!”

Sven said, “I think I do. This much. You needed Shirvanian’s psi ... to steal a ship.”

“It was a robot! He was supposed to be able to take us wherever we wanted to go. But after he cut the radio and the radar to break the trail—”

“Everything went wrong,” said Ardagh. “He’s no pilot, just a kid with a power he can’t control.”

Shirvanian said coldly, “I also cut the retros when we landed. Otherwise we’d all be dead.”

“I see ... that’s why the ship didn’t blow up.”

“He’s very good at turning things off,” Koz said. “Too bad some people can’t do that with their mouths.”

“Oh Koz, go set up your joss and pray to your Mother Shrinigasa. We need all the help we can get.”

“Don’t you ridicule my religion.”

“I’m not,” Ardagh said. “I’ll pray to her if it’ll do any good.”

Sven shook his head at the five incomprehensible beings. “The ergs moved in ... Shirvanian, did you turn them on?”

“I turned off your transmitter,” said Shirvanian.

“Transmitter?” He blinked. “Where do I have a transmitter?”

The boy shrugged indifferently. “I dunno. Someplace inside you.”

Sven slowly lifted his left arms and pushed a thumb between the lower sets of biceps and pectoral. “This hard thing here, could this be it? I always thought it was a tumor ... what does it do to the ergs?” He strained his eyes to see the place on his skin. It might have been a crease.

“Gives out a static signal that knocks out their systems. Within a limit.” Shirvanian tapped his nails on his box. “I wanted to see them up close. That’s why I stopped it.” He was looking very smug.

Sven wanted to strangle him with all four hands. He was frightened at the feeling; he had never gotten angry at ergs. “Esther, did you know?”

“No, sweetheart. Everything I know I picked out of the air. Dahlgren never held consultations with his specimens. But Topaze has a rad counter. No reason why you can’t have a transmitter.”

‘Who’s Topaze?” Koz wanted to know.

“You’ll meet him tomorrow. I don’t think you’re quite ready for him yet.”

“All this doesn’t tell us how to get out of here,” Koz said.

Shirvanian tapped his box again. “You won’t get out without my help. I can turn it off any time I want.”

Before the others could mince him, Esther wrapped her arms around him once-and-a-half. “Little genius, you’re a little stupid. Once that transmitter goes off the ergs will come and tear us every one in little pieces and we’ll turn into nice green glop to fertilize the ground. Now wrap yourself in a blanket and pack yourself off to sleep on one of those beds. You have enough to work your busy brains on tomorrow.”

“But will you get us to the station!” Koz yelled.

A thunderbolt crackled, a tree crashed nearby, and a sheet of rain slammed the roof. “Not in that,” Sven said mildly. “Do what the lady says.”

Mitzi shrugged and murmured, “Just like home. Mama Ape, Papa Goat and Big Brother Spiderman.”

Ardagh was pulling a knitted jumpsuit out of her duffel, “You should know Mitzi’s got a name for everyone. I’m the Ox, Koz is the Nut, Shirvanian’s the Gearbox. Joshua’s the Black Prince. He got off light.”

Esther laughed and regarded Mitzi with a quirked brow. “What’s your name for yourself, girl?”

Mitzi dropped her kif stick on a white tile and stamped on it; wrapped in her poncho, she flung herself on the mat.

Esther picked up the butt and dropped it in a refuse bin. “Tomorrow ...”

“The outhouse is out back of the house,” Sven said. “Goodnight.”

Esther gave Yigal a kick in the flank; he grunted and made room for her on the moss.

Sven swept a heap of straw into a corner in the storeroom. As he was arranging himself on its unaccommodating bulk, a shadow slipped through the doorway. “Sven ...”

It was Ardagh. “Don’t get up.” She sat beside him in a movement that was graceful for a person of her thickness. “I just remembered something ... I don’t know if I should tell you ...”

He was a hair’s breadth away from telling her that if she didn’t know she should forget it, but a surprising jet of feeling rose and traversed the length of his body at the nearness of her fleshly female presence. Mitzi notwithstanding, there was nothing wrong with her looks; her hair shone in a flicker of the dying lamplight, and her broad cheekbones were smooth and peach-colored. He propped himself on a set of elbows and hoped she could not see the heat in his face. “What is it?”

“A newsflash I saw in port on Barrazan Four ... the big outworld conference our parents were going to ... I—”

“What are you trying to say?”

She clasped her hands. “Next Thirtyday—that’s about five and a half weeks Solthree—Dahlgren’s coming into the Center to give a report to the Sciences Council.”

“He is?” Sven sat up. “Are you sure?”

“They said Edvard Dahlgren, they had pictures, old newstapes ... it couldn’t be another Dahlgren who’s a biologist and has a world to himself.”

“A world to himself?” Sven laughed. “No, I guess there couldn’t be another one.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “If the ergs took over, and killed so many—what can he be doing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”

She rose to go. “Sven? That transmitter ... the ergs make other machines, don’t they? Would it work on all of them?”

“Probably not.”

“I see. I guess I won’t tell the others that.”

“They’ll think of it themselves. Goodnight, Ardagh.”

* * *

She pushed into a bit of space between Mitzi and Joshua. She was shaking—from fear, chill, and the conviction that she should have kept her mouth shut. After a while, in the unending noise of rain and wind, sleep began to wash over her in an uneasy ebb and flow; in the troughs of its waves she saw first Dahlgren’s face, and then Sven’s. It had reminded her ... eyes, nose, forehead and cheekbones ...

If Dahlgren had shaved off the beard ...

DAHLGREN HAD
don
e his best to go mad.

He had howled the length and breadth of the concrete vaults, crawling and sobbing as his friends were plucked from him and slaughtered or starved, flung in heaps to rot into scales, bones and carapaces. Had scraped his knees and palms raw, battered his head against walls. The ergs had let him. He had even prayed, an ineffectual act, since he had never believed in anything but himself, He had torn hair and beard out by handfuls, scored his face with his nails, smashed the empty tanks and cages with his fists, shredded the last of the seedling plants with his teeth. The ergs watched him with camera eyes, sprayed him with antibiotics, set food before him. He splattered it to the floors first, and when he was starving, licked the floors.

No use. His body was scarred, foul and ragged. His head was hard clear Dahlgren, cold as the waters of his icy lakes.

“Why do you not kill me?” he screamed. “Why do you not kill me? Why?”

The ergs moved to and fro, click, buzz, whirr; he hammered his fists on their plates as they passed his live jetsam body and the open graveyard of his men.

Haruni of Cruxa II had been the last; the little russet stick-man, entomologist and chessmaster, had shuddered to death in Dahlgren’s arms. Dahlgren’s food was poison to him; he had eaten, vomited and died.
Now I will really go mad
, Dahlgren thought, but he did not, and he had years to go. He ate, choking, slept on cold floors, evacuated in corners; his heart palpitated, his hands knotted; his joints ached and thickened, he believed he would not recognize his face in a mirror if he saw it. His mind observed and collated; watched for weaknesses (none), bolt-holes (none), hiding places (none). They wanted him for something. He had nothing. All dead. Men, foliage, beasts. I am the beast. Sven? Dead, likely, in that far corner. And Esther and Yigal. Subjects, friends. Friends? I mastered. I had no friends. Haruni I killed, gave him my food in misplaced pity. Sven. Esther. Yigal. Begged for them, whined and slavered. Let them go, they will not harm you, and I will come back. Friends? Dead they are friends. Alive they hated icy Dahlgren. Your bones are in the corner, Haruni, I do not even remember your face.

* * *

I am Dahlgren and no other, even in wild hair and cankered skin, If I live I will begin again, without ergs, in a small place. And yet again, if I must. That is the Dahlgren I have always been.

* * *

His mind withdrew and approached a focus on another plane.

Perhaps it is a good thing for the universe that there is only one Dahlgren.

The thought vexed him inordinately.. He crouched in the center of the vault among clanking ergs, while he gnawed some slab of nourishment. His teeth were good.

This is terrible. All I can do in this obscene place is became more sane. Perhaps if I live long enough I shall die humble. Ultimate punishment.

His shoulders slumped. An erg paused and stroked him with sensors. He shuddered. Some change would occur.

“How? How?” He did not know how long it was since he had spoken. He cleared his throat. His voice creaked. “How long have I been here?” Humble. He gagged and spat.

SEVEN YEARS. The voice boomed around the walls.

Seven Barrazan V. Nine Solthree. He grunted.

YOU WILL COME.

“Leave me.”

Coils extended, wrapped and lifted him. He was rigid with fury. He could not move or even croak with the coil tight around his chest. The erg carried him to the infirmary entrance and stopped, too big to pass. There were half a dozen small servos clustered at the door to receive him. The files and equipment had been kept intact, or replaced.

The erg set him upright, and the small steel creatures drew him in with a dozen clawed arms. The walls had cracked in a few places and grown several patches of pink and green mold. Otherwise there was no change. The vents had been cleared and the dehumidifier was working.

Surrounded waist-high by palpating machines, Dahlgren stared at the opposite wall. His old GalFed uniform was hanging there fresh as on the day of arrival when he had put it in storage. It was too fine for the weather of his laboratory world, though it was a working uniform and not for show. It hung clean and crisp, a dark maroon coverall with three small gold emblems over the left breast: a star, a ringed planet, a circle divided by a cross, ancient symbol both of Earth and of Creation.

One of the ergs plucked a file card from a rack, inserted and retrieved it from a desk computer. “Place him on the scale.”

Claws placed him.

“You weigh twenty-eight kilos less than when you arrived here. We will rectify that.”

“You ...” Dahlgren searched for his voice and found it. “You intend, I suppose, to fatten me for the slaughter.”

Ergs had neither humor nor irony. “That is correct.”

* * *

They gave him a room with a bed, a bath, a locked door, in an isolation ward for one of the many curious and grotesque diseases on the planet. “No one here is more curious and grotesque than I,” said Dahlgren. The camera eyes did not flicker and the ventilators did not answer. Food came through an opening in the wall. It looked and smelled delicious.

He ignored it and lay on the bed, falling for hours or days—all illumination was artificial—into light sleep. He dreamed of the old days, but had no nightmares. They came with his waking hours.

Ergs arrived, finally, and injected him with stimulants. Fresh food appeared. He ate; it was so rich and fine that he vomited that and the next meal and the one after that. The ergs injected him with anti-emetics and gave him food more bland and simple. He ate it and it stayed down.

The ergs came to bathe him, heal his sores, give him therapy to cure his swollen arthritic joints, strap him into exercise machines. He began to put on weight.

He thought of the uniform, which would fit him in a short while, and of the ancient Romans, who used to dress captives in fine clothes before degrading them. His mind remained cold and clear.

One day or hour he moved, walked and spoke without pain or effort. He said, “This is interesting.”

Almost at once the ergs came to trim his hair and beard, take away the faded blue hospital clothing, and fit him into his uniform. They put a mirror before him. He recognized himself.

But that did not interest him, that he was as tall and strong as a man of sixty-three would be under the best of conditions. He did not have the strength to refuse the touch of a single one of those steel claws.

There was no chance of help, refuge, or escape. He was curious to know what arena he would be made to fight in, how long he would be allowed to fight.

And why.

* * *

They spoke to him, and made him walk and talk; noted his movements and recorded his gestures.
It
amused him, in his icy way, that there were things they were not sure of about him. It did not occur to him to deceive them.

They led him down the halls, where the debris had been cleaned away. It amused him, too, that they had gotten rid of the things that would horrify or distract him.

He was brought into a small room in which there was a screen with a chair in front of it. They locked him in and he sat down.

The screen flickered and filled with a ceiling view of a group of small ergs gathered about a low table, engaged with an object their meshing limbs hid from sight. They looked like drones attending a queen bee. They withdrew slightly, exposing limbs, a torso, metal-boned and flashing silver. They tightened, trimmed, smoothed; flexed and adjusted.

“Android robot,” Dahlgren murmured. “Playing with dolls!” A flash of contempt moved him. First curiosity, then contempt. Human feelings. “Am I becoming a man again?” asked Dahlgren. “Perhaps I will even feel ...”

Fear.

The ergs slid back and exposed the upper part of the body. It had two arms, five fingers on each. It was boned in gears and spindles, muscled in wires and flexes.

Above the neck it was, or seemed to be, flesh; it had eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, beard. Dahlgren’s.

The ergs moved out of the picture.

The erg-android blinked, straight into Dahlgren’s eyes, blue for blue. An erg approached to snip one lock of beard with its claw, and retreated.

The android blinked again, pulled back the pink lip comers into the beard, into Dahlgren’s rare smile, and raised a steel-tendoned arm, palm outward.

“Hello, Dahlgren Zero,” it said. “I am Dahlgren One.”

* * *

Dahlgren looked into the eyes and swallowed. Then he sat up straight in his new health, his clean cloth, and said, “How do you do, erg-Dahlgren. I am Dahlgren Man.”

Erg-Dahlgren smiled again; the screen went blank. Dahlgren touched his ginger-gray hair and beard, his mouth, and closed his eyes. He did not bend. Inside the closed lids he saw himself crawling the rough floor on his bleeding knees and palms. That was peace.