Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta Page 3

  Looking across the room to the rack where his twenty-fifth-century civilian clothes hung, he spoke softly. “Twiki, would you get me that pair of pants?”

  The object of his address was a small robot. It stood less than waist high, compared to Buck. Its shape was a compact, stumpy one designed to pack a maximum volume of electronic circuitry and mechanical parts into a minimum amount of space. Its scanners glistened beneath the clean lights of a standard Inner City personal lodging unit. Its movements had the humorous appearance of a willing but not overly bright Barbary ape reduced to mechanical form.

  The robot, Twiki, became activated in response to Buck’s quiet request. It—or he—scuttered across the room, tilting alternately from side to side with each step of his stumpy legs. He reached the clothing rack, picked up Buck’s trousers, and started back toward the spaceman with the trousers in his hands.

  Halfway across the room, the robot’s movements became unsteady and erratic. He hesitated, hopped forward again, tottered, and nearly fell. Finally he came to a complete halt, extending his arms with the trousers neatly folded on them, toward Buck.

  “A little closer, please,” the spaceman asked.

  Twiki’s arms moved, his scanner lenses revolved in concentration, he lifted his feet and stamped them in place, but somehow could not move forward another centimeter. He made a final, convulsive effort to complete his movement—and failed. There was a sound like a small explosion somewhere inside the robot. A shudder passed through the machine, and a puff of smoke escaped from it, as if several circuits had fused. The robot ceased all movement. The small cloud of smoke that had escaped it drifted upward, partially disappearing into the fabric of Buck’s trousers.

  “Hah, modern technology!” Buck grunted. He reached for the robot and took back his trousers. He slapped the cloth to clear it of fumes, then pulled the pants over his legs.

  He bent to examine the robot, talking to Twiki as one would to a sick child or an injured pet while checking the extent of its hurts. “My car used to do this in the old days,” Buck muttered. He opened a slightly charred panel on the torso of the robot, reached inside, and examined the wiring within. “I wonder if you can jump-start a robot.”

  Obviously, Buck did something wrong. There was another crackling sound, and another puff of smoke rose toward the ceiling.

  Buck Rogers felt a jolt of electricity as the energy in the immobilized power cells drained—fortunately for Buck, only partially—from its interior, through the shorted circuits and into him. Even the partial dose of the robot’s energy supply sent the spaceman across the room with a jolt. He was dazed into semi-consciousness by the double effect of the electric shock and the unexpected flight across his room.

  “Get off me!” a muffled, mechanical-sounding voice said.

  Still partially dazed, Buck looked around for the source.

  “You’re sitting on me!” The mechanical voice sounded annoyed.

  Comprehending at last, Buck pushed himself to his feet and retrieved the object he’d unknowingly sat on. It was a small rectangular box with sides of polished, plasticlike material. The insides of the box were not themselves visible through the tinted, dark plastic that surrounded them.

  But a series of indicator lights covered most of the interior of one surface of the box. These flashed on and off with the flow of current through the densely packed electronic circuitry that filled the box. As the lights changed their pattern, flashing a spectrum of colors and shapes, a remarkable resemblance to a cartoonlike but oddly expressive human face could be seen.

  It was Dr. Theopolis, one of the great computer brains of the Inner City. Physically helpless—for Dr. Theopolis and the other computer brains all possessed neither limbs nor implements, and had even to be carried around by a glittering metallic loop of chain links, like a twentieth-century woman’s purse—the brains still carried out vital tasks for the citizens of the Inner City and for the city as a whole.

  When they assembled in their meeting room, the computer brains collectively formed the high council of the Inner City. The theory upon which this council had been set up was as follows: any human administration has its limitations. If vested in a single person, the power of leadership inevitably leads to dictatorship and tyranny. If shared among various individuals and factions, the power tends to become divided and ineffective.

  But by vesting the high decision-making powers of government in the greatest aggregation of electronic logic circuits and data-banks ever assembled, the Inner City was assured of government by completely objective intelligences, freed of the distractions of vanity and ambition, wishing only to serve the common good of the residents of the City and of all Earth. That was the plan: but so far, it had not been possible to separate out the emotions and be able to produce pure emotionless thought, even in the computer brains.

  Soon after his first arrival at the Inner City, Buck Rogers had acquired both the robot Twiki and the computer brain Theopolis. The three had shared hair-raising adventures in savage Anarchia, in the Inner City, and in outer space itself.

  Now Buck bent and lifted Theopolis. He examined the circuit-filled cube carefully. “I’m sorry, Dr. Theopolis. I didn’t mean to sit on you. Are you all right?”

  “I’m quite all right,” the brain responded. Although lacking in extensible organs, the computer was fitted with audio sensors, video scanners, and a voder circuit—the computer equivalents of ears, eyes, and a voice.

  “Yes, I’m all right,” the computer repeated. “But I’ll have you remember that I’m a highly sophisticated compuvisor, not a couch for the comfort of your inefficient protoplasmic embodiment.”

  “I’m sorry,” Buck answered. “It was an accident. I got a shock trying to get Twiki back in shape.”

  “Hmph!” the computer brain exclaimed. “You have better ways to spend your time, don’t you? Besides, you’ll probably do more harm than good, messing around with the insides of a quad. Call Drone Repair.”

  “Right,” Buck Rogers conceded. “Let my fingers do the walking.”

  “I beg your pardon?” the computer asked.

  “Never mind.” Buck picked up an intercom unit, one of the com-phones that connected every personal dwelling unit in Inner City with all of the city’s support services. “Drone Repair, please.” He waited a moment. Then, “Hi there. I’ve got this robot here, a quad model, designation Twiki. Darned thing threw a short.”

  There was a long silence on Buck’s end while he listened.

  Then Buck said, “Well, I can’t compute either. I also can’t fix the little mother. Wait a sec.”

  He held the phone out to Theopolis and asked him to try and get some service for Twiki.

  “Drone Repair?” asked the computer’s synthesized voice. “This is Theopolis one-four-eight-oh compuvisor. Report malfunction in Twiki drone five-three-two-slash-one-four-bee. Thank you.” The computer’s indicator lights flashed as if he were smiling up at Buck Rogers. To the spaceman he said, “You may replace the com-phone.”

  Buck replaced the phone, gave Theopolis and the unmoving Twiki a final glance, and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Theopolis called.

  “Out,” Buck said, distractedly.

  “But you know you aren’t permitted to leave the premises without clearing with me,” Theopolis almost shouted.

  “Well, I’m going to. What are you going to do about it?” Buck shot back.

  “I’ll have to report you,” the computer declared solemnly.

  “How?” Rogers asked, still standing in the doorway. “Twiki can’t move until the short’s repaired. You have no way to move around unless he carries you—which he can’t—or I carry you—which I won’t. You won’t be able to file any reports till I get back, my friend.”

  Buck started to draw the door shut behind him. He still seemed distracted, with his mind miles away.

  “But the Drone repairmen are coming here,” Theopolis called after him.

  Buck turned
around and re-entered the room. “Good point,” he muttered ruefully. “Guess I’ll just have to take you with me. To keep you from squealing on me, as we used to say when I was a schoolkid in old Chi-town.” His actions were as good as his words, as he reached for the computer brain and carefully placed its carrying-chain around his neck like a microphone cord.

  “Where are we going?” Theopolis cried plaintively.

  Buck Rogers ignored the question. He was staring at his feet, but he wasn’t—apparently—thinking about his footwear. Buck stayed silent for long moments: then, at last, he snapped his head upright and started for the com-phone. “First,” he said to Theopolis, who swung back and forth across Buck’s chest as he walked, “I’ll get Drone Repair on the horn again.” He set Theopolis down on a table, and placed the com-phone unit next to the computer brain.

  “Now,” Buck said, “you relay info from those repair people, and we’ll see if I can get Twiki back in working order using their info and my tools.”

  In twenty minutes Twiki’s scanner lenses were flashing, his joints and limbs were mobile, and he uttered several short squeals.

  Once more Buck placed Theopolis’ carrying chain around his own neck; he stood up, and again he headed for the door.

  “But where are we going?” Theopolis complained.

  Buck didn’t answer, just beckoned for Twiki to follow.

  F O U R

  The Inner City of the twenty-fifth century stood like a last bastion of civilization against the encroaching night of savagery, barbarism, and death. Not that its leaders or its citizens saw their city in that light. On the contrary, they regarded themselves as the vanguard of a new blossoming for humankind, the most advanced center of learning and technology on a blighted planet, from where technicians who were almost missionaries of enlightenment went out to spread the influence of sanitation, organization, and rehabilitation over the burnt and poisoned Earth.

  Still, between the ravages of barbarian tribes and the possible spread of plague through un-policed contact between the Inner City and the denizens of Anarchia beyond, the leaders of the Inner City had seen fit to proclaim a strange sort of quarantine, a quarantine designed not to save a healthy world from a disease-bearing individual, but to protect an oasis of sanity and health from a world gone mad with sickness and hate.

  The Inner City was walled like a castle keep of old, only its walls were of plastic and metal, of force-fields and of electronic scanners rather than of stone or wood.

  The walls were guarded, and occasionally the guards would turn their glances toward the city they protected. But their concern was with keeping invaders out rather than citizens in, and little attention was paid to the inside of the barriers.

  As Buck Rogers crouched in the shadows of a looming structure near the inner walls of the city, he peered outward at the barrier and the personnel staffing it. From the computer brain still hanging at his neck rose a question: “Why are we at the city wall?”

  “Don’t your batteries ever wear down?” Buck whispered fiercely.

  “What are batteries?” the computer asked.

  “Be quiet or I’ll break your nose,” Buck answered logically.

  “Hah! I don’t have a—”

  Buck muffled the end of the sentence by stuffing a piece of soft cloth into the computer’s speaker-housing.

  “—nose.” Theopolis’ last word was hardly audible.

  With the computer hanging from his neck, Buck sprinted to a public intercom station, with Twiki right behind him. Buck grabbed the intercom speaker and gasped into it, in the voice of a near-panicked man, “Wall security. Fast!” There was a pause. Then Buck said, “Hello. I see some suspicious-looking characters lurking around Entrance 11. You’d better get someone here fast. I think they look like Draconians.”

  As com-central flashed word back to the wall, the guards at Entrances 10 and 12 dashed toward Entrance 11, ready to intercept the intruders and take them into custody.

  As soon as the entrances were cleared Buck Rogers leaped into a public-transit landcar. These vehicles were part of the municipal service offered by the Inner City: by stationing a sufficient number of them around its territory for the free use of citizens beyond the range of the streamlined monorail system, far less equipment and fuel was committed than had been the case in the days of private automobiles when billions upon billions of dollars were tied up in the maintenance of millions of vehicles that stood idle most of the time.

  The Inner City landcar was a sleek, low-slung vehicle that skimmed along the smooth roadways and special tracks of the Inner City quietly, rapidly, and safely.

  But Buck Rogers pressed the manual override button that disconnected the landcar’s automatic guidance system and turned it from a part of the city’s arterial flow, transformed it to an independent vehicle. Buck, with Twiki seated beside him, pointed it squarely at Entrance 11, ran up the power to its peak level, and zoomed out of the Inner City, into the dangerous and ill-explored regions vaguely designated as Anarchia.

  Here, beyond the city walls, all was loneliness and desolation. A weird moon shone down on the Earth. Unlike the white or silvery-yellow light of the ancient moon, the satellite of Earth’s twenty-fifth century cast a baleful reddish glow across the poisoned surface of the planet.

  Strange shadows leaped and shrank in the blood-red moonlight. Equally strange sounds were carried by night winds—sounds of animals and soughings of trees, boomings as of distant surf, as if ancient Lake Michigan had become a huge inland sea, and vague noises that might have been made by manlike beasts or beastlike men somewhere in the dark.

  Theopolis tried futilely to speak through the clogged speaker of his box. Buck Rogers reached into the speaker-enclosure and removed the impromptu gag. “What is it?” the spaceman demanded in a soft voice. “And be quiet or I’ll jump up and down on you.”

  Theopolis took the warning. “I said, where are we?“

  “Anarchia.”

  “You are not allowed in Anarchia, Captain Rogers. It’s dangerous.”

  “Huh!” Buck grunted. “You call this dangerous? You should have seen this city when I was a kid. Chicago—or Detroit—or New York! Now, they were dangerous!”

  Theopolis fell silent. Twiki was silent, but his scanner lenses flashed up and down, back and forth.

  Buck, too, scanned the scene, from where they stood out to the horizon. In the distance he could make out a campfire of sorts. Mutants were standing and sitting around it, trying to keep warm in the chilly night air near what had once been Lake Michigan. Ancient ruins surrounded the campfire.

  Buck propelled the landcar forward. As he drew nearer to the encampment a pile of rubble, disturbed by some force-effect emanating from the groundcar, tumbled across the pathway. Buck swung the landcar desperately away from the tumbling debris, found the car headed toward an even worse obstacle, hit the brake sharply and swung back barely in time to avoid a crash, but as he did so the vehicle’s engine coughed and fell silent.

  Buck struggled with the unfamiliar controls, trying to restart the futuristic vehicle.

  As he did so, the mutants clustered around the campfire began to advance toward the landcar.

  Buck flipped the main power control of the landcar, hit the automatic starting control, fed power to the vehicle’s mechanism.

  The mutants advanced, growing more confident as the landcar failed to respond.

  Finally the landcar returned to life, but by now it was completely surrounded by hulking, menacing figures, the red light of the distant campfire and the baleful moon reflecting like gore from their bleary eyes.

  They circled the landcar, reaching tentatively to pat and feel its surface, then reaching more boldly toward Buck or Theopolis or Twiki. They spoke no language recognizable as such, but grunted and mumbled a patois of half-articulate noises more akin to the mouthings of animals than the speech of men.

  Buck tried slowly to back the landcar away from the mutants, but they had surrounded it entirely by n
ow. He wasn’t ready to ram them and run them down—perhaps later he might wish that he had, but for now he still regarded them as humans, however degraded, and he couldn’t bring himself to crash into them coldbloodedly.

  Instead he tried a contrived expression of friendly cheer; he spoke in hopes that they might understand his tone of voice if not his words: “Uh—hi.” Buck ventured, “You, uh, guys got a really nice place here, don’t you?”

  He attempted again to edge the landcar through their ranks without maiming or killing any of the threatening mutants. “Uh, hate to eat and run like this.”

  He tried once more to back the landcar away from the others, but only succeeded in moving it a short distance.

  “Uh, listen, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, look me up.”

  He backed the car a bit more, but the mutants began to cluster behind the vehicle, clearly beginning to understand Buck’s attempt to ease his way through the thinnest portion of their ranks.

  “Maybe you’d like some silk stockings? Chocolate bars?” The mutants continued to gather in the rearward path of the landcar, ignoring Buck’s distracting banter. “Would ya?” he tried again. “No? Huh, guess not.”

  By now almost all of the mutants had clustered behind the landcar. “Well, that’s okay,” Buck told the mutants, “ ’cause I don’t have any anyway. Heh-heh,” he laughed nervously. Twiki squealed.

  The mutants were now concentrated at the rear of the car. As if at some unseen and unheard signal, they launched themselves toward the car in a murderous, concerted rush.

  Simultaneously with the move of the half-men, Buck slammed the landcar from reverse into forward gear. The car lurched forward. Buck shouted an ancient battle cry. The vehicle slammed into the debris of centuries.

  It was a desperate risk. If the debris had slagged into a solid mass with the passing decades and centuries, there was no way that the landcar—or its occupants!—could possibly survive the impact. But if the debris had instead undergone a sort of dry rot, slowly disintegrating into a weakened mass of material with the alternate expansion and contraction, soaking and evaporation of rain and snow for the past five hundred years—then the landcar could plow through it like a motorcyclist sloughing through a mountain of shaving cream.