“George isn’t like that—he gives me food,” said Mara. Senilde didn’t hear; he was thinking about himself. He mused: “As a boy, I loved playing with toy soldiers and staging little wars. When I became a very bored immortal, I thought it could be fun to play those wars again—with people. For most people are just puppets. How easy it was to play on their fears, vanities, and power-lusts! I had a fine time inventing new weapons and methods of attack and defense, then watching the little men applying them—in the name of this or that. First, local wars, then national wars, then ideological wars, then one great planetary civil war. So you were looking for the white circle headquarters, George? This is it. And I’m the commander.”
“I presume this is the green triangle HQ, too?”
“Correct. Again, I’m the commander. The Generals used to come to me for orders, thinking I was commanding their side only. It amused me no end: they were so stiff, serious, conscientious, keen, high-minded. And they always thanked me for my guidance. Now I’ve quite forgotten what their silly symbols were supposed to stand for—some kind of ’ism, the One and Only Way of Life.”
Senilde laughed his wet laugh.
“I’d put new weapons in the hands of one side, and then the other. Match tanks against tank-torpedoes, atomic bombs against nerve gases. At last I grew tired of them and their petty intrigues. I was sick of their jealousies and the way they curried my favors. I respected the machines more: they didn’t fight among themselves like rats. Anyhow, so-called human beings were becoming redundant in this mechanized warfare. I’d invented weapons which could detect, recognize, and engage targets by themselves. People were becoming just nuisances hiding behind them, ducking and hoping they wouldn’t get hurt. They merely got in the way. And when they didn’t duck in time, they were liable to clog the machines with their messy bodies.”
“You do love people, don’t you?” said George, sarcastically. Senilde ignored him. “So I decided to dispense with people altogether. I presented both sides with Meknitron gas. They saturated the planet with it and obligingly wiped themselves out almost completely. Odd spots escaped, like the village of Fami, where a perpetual up-draft kept the ledge clear. The mechanical war went on —still goes on. But I lost interest even in that. Now I mostly sleep and sun-bathe, and wait for the real sunshine to return.”
“The real sunshine?” Mara echoed, questioningly.
“The clouds of Meknitron have been slowly losing substance for a long time. They’ve lifted from the ground so far that only the highest mountains touch them. They’ll continue to rise and disperse. In less than a thousand years, the sun should begin to break through. This was once such a sunny little planet. I do miss the sun.”
“Your Meknitron,” said George, heavily, “killed one of our crew as the ship passed through it.”
“Really?” said Senilde, and yawned.
“I didn’t expect you to burst into tears. However, before you go to sleep you might explain why some white circle tanks should first attack us, then suddenly switch to our side and defend us against green triangle tanks.”
Senilde frowned. “A strange incident. Give me full details of what happened.”
George complied.
“I see,” said Senilde. “Well, maybe you noticed that the circle and triangle tanks and vehicles are of different designs and sizes. They’re deliberately so. Each fighting machine has a memory bank of the outlines of the machines, including aircraft, belonging to its own side. If a tank, say, detects by radar or vision another approaching, it searches its memory bank to try to match the pattern of the outline. If its file contains no such pattern, the tanks act on the assumption that the other is an enemy.”
“So?”
“When your space-ship landed, it was vertical. White circle tanks have no vertical shapes of that kind on file. So they opened fire. But their fire caused your ship to topple to the horizontal. In that position it much resembled the body of the white circle torpedo-on-wheels— sufficiently so to pass muster as a friend. Similarly, the green triangle tanks registered it as an enemy. You understand?”
“Yes, I get it. But who’s side are the big steel wheels pitching for?”
“Neither. They’re just fighting mad—they’ll go for anybody. I threw them in just for a bit of spice. They really date back to the days of the humans. Used to cut people to pieces or frighten ’em to death or just pin ’em down until the artillery shot them up.”
“You have a great sense of humor, Senilde. If I were—”
George broke off, for an uneasy thought crossed his mind. “Look,” he said, urgently, “when I left my friends they were planning to try to haul the ship upright again —using white circle tanks to do the hauling.”
Senilde laughed slobberingly. “That’s just the kind of thing which appeals to my great sense of humor, George. What a happy surprise for them! The moment the tanks finish the job, they’ll register the ship as an enemy again, and turn around and blast it point-blank.”
George felt sick in the stomach. Not merely on behalf of the skipper and the others, although he thought of them. Senilde had a point about people and their self-interest. For what was worrying him most was the prospect, if the ship were destroyed, of being marooned on this soulless planet at the mercy of an omnipotent and amoral dotard.
He snapped: “You said you ran the war from this headquarters, here. Are all the war machines powered from here?”
“Yes. They’re powered by radio.”
“Then for Pete’s sake cut the power—right now. If it’s not too late, that’ll save the ship and my friends.”
“Oh, I can’t do that.”
“What? Why not? You said the war doesn’t mean anything to you any more.”
“It doesn’t, George. But I would have to climb to the upper floor and mess about with switches and things. Tiresome. Besides, I hate climbing stairs.”
George felt like hitting him, but remembered in time the old man’s protective thunderbolt.
Instead, he stormed: “Then I’ll go. Where is it? What do I do?”
“You’ll never find the control room—there’s a secret panel or two and all kinds of complex safety devices. Besides, I don’t want you prying—”
A bell rang sweetly high on the wall.
“Ah!” exclaimed Senilde. “This is my lucky day—I have another visitor. Who can it be? Let’s see.”
He walked out of the lounge. George and Mara stared at each other. George threw up his arms. “Isn’t it maddening to want to kill a man you can’t kill?
Where’s the old fool gone now?”
“The best way to find out is follow him,” said Mara, practically. She went out. George tagged along behind; he was curious about the visitor, too. Senilde was in the gloomy cavern of the hall staring out at the garden. A distant figure was approaching the fountain in the driveway. Senilde was shaking with anticipatory glee.
George unslung his telescope and leveled it. The newcomer was a mere stick of a man, old, shriveled, knock-kneed, in a one-piece tunic so dirty its original color was unplaceable. However, he seemed at ease, walking slowly and calmly. When the fountain duly performed, he walked steadily through the shower, not changing his pace but only his expression, which became one of disgust.
Mara wanted to look through the telescope. George gave it to her.
“It Leep,” she reported, without surprise.
Senilde looked at her and asked what instrument she was using. Either he’d not seen telescopes before or else they’d passed out of use on Venus so long ago he’d quite forgotten them. Mara passed it to him. He was fascinated and watched Leep closely through it
Leep sat on no seats, and when he neared the sticky patch he seemed to divine its existence and walked carefully around it. Senilde sighed with disappointment. Then he whispered: “The step will catch him.”