Hellman managed to slide to the ground. He stretched himself and rested while Wayne stripped out the points and munched them, then dismantled the machine and stored some of the choicer parts in its cargo section just beneath its own CPU. Watching him, Hellman became aware that he was getting hungry, too.
“I don’t suppose you have anything that I can eat?” Hellman asked, as he watched Wayne slaver as it munched down one headlight.
“Not here, no,” Wayne said. “But at the meeting we’ll be able to do something for you. “
“I don’t eat metal, you know,” Hellman said. “Not even plastic. “
“I am aware of humans’ special dietary requirements,” the carhunter replied. He spit out a couple of lug nuts. “Well, that was delicious. Too bad you humans don’t know about headlights. Come on, mount up, we’ll be late.”
“Through no fault of mine,” Hellman muttered, climbing onto the carhunter again.
In another hour they had left the desolate badlands and were traveling across grassy rolling country. There was a river to their right, and green rolling hills to the left. So far Hellman had not seen any signs of human, or even animal, life. There was plenty of vegetation around here, however. Most of it seemed to be in the form of trees and grass. Nothing there for him to eat. But perhaps something would turn up when they reached the meeting place.
Far ahead, in a cleft between two hills, he caught sight of a glint of sunlight off metal. “What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s the Roundhouse,” Wayne said. “That’s what we call the Great Meeting Hall. And look. Some of the others are there already. “
The Roundhouse was a circular building, one story high, open to the weather and supported on pillars. It was nicely landscaped with big trees and shrubbery. There were perhaps twenty machines milling around outside. Hellman could hear their engines idling before he could make out the words they were saying to each other. Behind the Roundhouse was a fenced enclosure. Here there were several enormous mechanical creatures of a kind Hellman had not seen before. They towered above the carhunters, looking like mechanical renditions of brontosaurus. Close to their enclosure there were various other structures.
As Wayne approached, the carhunters spotted Hellman on his back and fell silent. Wayne coasted to a stop near them.
“Howdy, Jeff,” Wayne said. “Si, Bill, Skeeter, hello.”
“Hello, Wayne,” they replied.
“I reckon you can get down now,” Wayne said to Hellman.
Hellman slid down the carhunter’s back. It felt good to have solid ground beneath him again, though he was a little intimidated by the size of the other carhunters.
“What you got there, Wayne?” one of them asked.
“You can see for yourself,” Wayne said. “It’s a human.”
“Well, so it is,” the machine called Jeff replied. “Haven’t seen one of them critters around for a long time.”
“They’re getting pretty scarce, “ Wayne agreed. “ Anything to drink around here?”
One of the carhunters pointed one of his extensors at a forty-gallon barrel which had been put aside under one of the trees. “Try some of that. Some of Lester’s home brew he sent along. “
“Isn’t Lester going to make it?”
“Afraid not. He’s got that rot of the control cables; it’s got him crippled up pretty good.”
Wayne went over to the barrel. He extruded a tube and inserted it into the barrel. The others watched silently as the level of the barrel went down.
“Hey, Wayne! Save some for somebody else!”
Wayne finally withdrew his drinking tube. “Yahoo!” he said. “Got a kick, that stuff.”
“Three hundred proof and flavored with cinnamon. Human, you want to try some?”
“I guess I’ll pass on it,” Hellman said. The carhunters guffawed rudely.
“Where in the hell did you find him, Wayne?”
“Out on the prairie,” Wayne said…His owner is still out there in the spaceship. “
“Why didn’t he come along?”
“Don’t rightly know. Might not be mobile.”
“What’re you going to do with him?”
“That’s for the Executive Council to decide,” Wayne said.
“Does he talk?” the one called Skeeter asked. “Sure, I talk,” Hellman said.
Hellman was about to put this smart-alecky robot straight. But then there was a movement within the Roundhouse and two robots came out. Their open framework struts and girders were painted blue; their upper part was red. They had black symbols painted here and there. They seemed to be officials of some sort.
“The Chief sent us,” one of them said to Wayne. “He heard you came into camp with a human.”
“News gets around fast, don’t it?” Wayne said.
“Wayne, you know that’s against the rules.”
Wayne shook his big head. “It’s not customary, but I never heard it was against the rules.”
“Well, it is. We’ll have to take him inside for interrogation.”
“Figured as much,” Wayne said.
“Come with us, human,” one of the officials said.
There didn’t seem to be anything for Hellman to do but follow orders. He knew he was no match for the robots in speed or strength. He’d have to keep his wits about him. It might not be too easy to come out of this one okay.
What really perplexed him, however, was, what did these robots have against human beings? How had they developed in this way? Were there any humans at all on this planet? Or had the robots killed them all?
One of the buildings seemed to serve the carhunters as a prison. Its sides were closed. It had a door, which had a padlock. One of the red and blue officials or guards or whatever they were unlocked the door and held it open for Hellman.
“How long you going to lock me up for?” Hellman asked.
“You will be informed of the council’s decisions.” They closed the door behind him.
It was a large room made of galvanized iron. There were windows set high up. There was no glass in them. The room was devoid of furniture. Evidently robots didn’t use chairs or beds. There were a few low metal tables. Hellman looked around, and, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he made out a wink of lights from one corner. He went there to investigate.
There was a robot in the corner. It was somewhat smaller than a man, perhaps five feet high. And it was slender. It had a well-defined head sculpted from some bright metal, and the usual arms and legs. The creature watched him silently, and that was a little unnerving.
“Hi,” Hellman said. “I’m Tom Hellman. Who are you?”
The robot didn’t reply.
“Can’t you talk?” Hellman asked. “Don’t you speak English?”
Still no reply from the robot, who continued to watch him with one red and one green eye.
“Great,” Hellman said. “They put me in with a dummy. “
As he spoke, he noticed that the robot was scratching in the dirt of the packed earth floor with a long toe. Hellman read it: “The walls have ears.”
He looked at the robot. It gave him a meaningful look.
“What happens now?” Hellman said, dropping his voice to a whisper. The robot scratched, “We’ll know soon.” The robot didn’t want to communicate any further. Hellman went to the far side of the room and stretched out on the floor. He was very hungry now. Were they going to feed him? And more important, were they going to feed him something he could eat? Outside, it was growing late. After a while, Hellman started to doze off. He fell into a light sleep, and soon he was dreaming of vague, threatening things that came at him out of a dark sky. He was trying to explain to them that he was not to, blame, but he couldn’t remember what for.
Hellman awoke when the door to the prison was opened. At first he thought they had come to tell him what they had decided. But they had brought him food instead. It consisted entirely of fruit and nuts. None of them was familiar to him, but none were strange, either. They also brought him water. It was carried in quart oil cans which had been scrupulously cleansed and bore not even a trace of oil. Hellman learned later that these cans had never held oil, even though “oil” was stamped into the metal of their sides. He had no idea then that the carhunters had a ceremonial side to their nature, and were able to use certain utilitarian objects for their symbolic value alone.
The two carhunters who brought the food and water would answer no questions. They waited silently while Hellman ate. He thought they watched him with curiosity. He couldn’t figure that out, but he was hungry enough so that he ate anyway. They took away the hammered tin plates on which they had brought the food, but they left him two water cans.
Time passed. Hellman had no watch, and was unable to reach the ship’s computer to get a time check. But he figured that hours must have passed. He grew irritated with the robot who was locked in with him, who sat in a corner of the room and seemed to be in a cataleptic fit.
At last Hellman had had enough. Boredom can drive a man to outrageous deeds. He walked over to the robot and said, “Say something.”
The robot opened its red and green eyes and looked at him. It slowly shook its head, left to right, meaning no.
“Because they can hear us, right?”