"Lenny… you can hear me! Good boy, Lenny! Now make a turn, to port. Walls… close…"
"Unit LNE to Command. Request positive identification; transmit code 685749."
"Lenny-I can't… don't have code blanks. But it's me…"
"In absence of recognition code, your transmission disregarded." I send. And now the walls loom high above me. There are many lights, but I see them only vaguely. I am nearly blind now.
"Lenny-less'n two hundred feet to go. Listen, Lenny. I'm climbing down. I'm going to jump down, Lenny, and get around under your fore scanner pickup. You'll see me, Lenny. You'll know me then."
The false transmission ceases. I sense a body moving across my side. The gap closes. I detect movement before me, and in automatic reflex fire anti-P charges before I recall that I am unarmed.
A small object has moved out before me, and taken up a position between me and the wall behind which the Enemy conceal themselves. It is dim, but appears to have the shape of a man…
I am uncertain. My alert center attempts to engage inhibitory circuitry which will force me to halt, but it lacks power. I can override it. But still I am unsure. Now I must take a last risk; I must shunt power to my forward scanner to examine this obstacle more closely. I do so, and it leaps into greater clarity. It is indeed a man-and it is enclothed in regulation blues of the Volunteers. Now, closer, I see the face and through the pain of my great effort, I study it…
14
"He's backed against the wall," Reynolds said hoarsely. "It's still coming. A hundred feet to go-"
"You were a fool, Reynolds!" the mayor barked. "A fool to stake everything on that old dotard's crazy ideas!"
"Hold it!" As Reynolds watched, the mighty machine slowed, halted, ten feet from the sheer wall before it. For a moment, it sat, as though puzzled. Then it backed, halted again, pivoted ponderously to the left, and came about.
On its side, a small figure crept up, fell across the lower gun deck. The Bolo surged into motion, retracing its route across the artillery-scarred gardens.
"He's turned it." Reynolds let his breath out with a shuddering sigh. "It's headed out for open desert. It might get twenty miles before it finally runs out of steam."
The strange voice that was the Bolo's came from the big panel before Mayfield:
"Command… Unit LNE reports main power cells drained, secondary cells drained; now operating at.037 percent efficiency, using Final Emergency Power. Request advice as to range to be covered before relief maintenance available."
"It's a long way, Lenny…" Sanders' voice was a bare whisper. "But I'm coming with you…"
Then there was only the crackle of static. Ponderously, like a great mortally stricken animal, the Bolo moved through the ruins of the fallen roadway, heading for the open desert.
"That damned machine," the mayor said in a hoarse voice. "You'd almost think it was alive."
"You would at that," Pete Reynolds said.
A Relic of War
The old war machine sat in the village square, its impotent guns pointing aimlessly along the dusty street. Shoulder-high weeds grew rankly about it, poking up through the gaps in the two-yard-wide treads; vines crawled over the high, rust-and guano-streaked flanks. A row of tarnished enameled battle honors gleamed dully across the prow, reflecting the late sun.
A group of men lounged near the machine; they were dressed in heavy work clothes and boots; their hands were large and calloused, their faces weather-burned. They passed a jug from hand to hand, drinking deep. It was the end of a long workday and they were relaxed, good-humored.
"Hey, we're forgetting old Bobby," one said. He strolled over and sloshed a little of the raw whiskey over the soot-blackened muzzle of the blast cannon slanting sharply down from the forward turret. The other men laughed.
"How's it going, Bobby?" the man called.
Deep inside the machine there was a soft chirring sound.
"Very well thank you," a faint, whispery voice scraped from a grill below the turret.
"You keeping an eye on things, Bobby?" another man called.
"All clear," the answer came: a bird-chirp from a dinosaur.
"Bobby, you ever get tired just setting here?"
"Hell, Bobby don't get tired," the man with the jug said. "He's got a job to do, old Bobby has."
"Hey, Bobby, what kind o'boy are you?" a plump, lazy-eyed man called.
"I am a good boy," Bobby replied obediently.
"Sure Bobby's a good boy." The man with the jug reached up to pat the age-darkened curve of chromalloy above him. "Bobby's looking out for us."
Heads turned at a sound from across the square: the distant whine of a turbocar, approaching along the forest road.
"Huh! Ain't the day for the mail," a man said. They stood in silence, watching as a small, dusty cushion-car emerged from deep shadow into the yellow light of the street. It came slowly along to the plaza, swung left, pulled to a stop beside the boardwalk before a corrugated metal store front lettered BLAUVELT PROVISION COMPANY. The canopy popped open and a man stepped down. He was of medium height, dressed in a plain city-type black coverall. He studied the store front, the street, then turned to look across af the men. He came across toward them.
"Which of you men is Blauvelt?" he asked as he came up. His voice was unhurried, cool. His eyes flicked over the men.
A big, youngish man with a square face and sun-bleached hair lifted his chin.
"Right here," he said. "Who're you?"
"Crewe is the name. Disposal Officer, War Materiel Commission." The newcomer looked up at the great machine looming over them. "Bolo Stupendous, Mark XXV," he said. He glanced at the men's faces, fixed on Blauvelt. "We had a report that there was a live Bolo out here. I wonder if you realize what you're playing with?"
"Hell, that's just Bobby," a man said.
"He's town mascot," someone else said.
"This machine could blow your town off the map," Crewe said. "And a good-sized piece of jungle along with it."
Blauvelt grinned; the squint lines around his eyes gave him a quizzical look.
"Don't go getting upset, Mr. Crewe," he said. "Bobby's harmless-"
"A Bolo's never harmless, Mr. Blauvelt. They're fighting machines, nothing else."
Blauvelt sauntered over and kicked at a corroded treadplate. "Eighty-five years out in this jungle is kind of tough on machinery, Crewe. The sap and stuff from the trees eats chromalloy like it was sugar candy. The rains are acid, eat up equipment damn near as fast as we can ship it in here. Bobby can still talk a little, but that's about all."
"Certainly it's deteriorated; that's what makes it dangerous. Anything could trigger its battle reflex circuitry. Now, if you'll clear everyone out of the area, I'll take care of it."
"You move kind of fast for a man that just hit town," Blauvelt said, frowning. "Just what you got in mind doing?"
"I'm going to fire a pulse at it that will neutralize what's left of its computing center. Don't worry; there's no danger-"
"Hey," a man in the rear rank blurted. "That mean he can't talk any more?"
"That's right," Crewe said. "Also, he can't open fire on you."
"Not so fast, Crewe," Blauvelt said. "You're not messing with Bobby. We like him like he is." The other men were moving forward, forming up in a threatening circle around Crewe.
"Don't talk like a fool," Crewe said. "What do you think a salvo from a Continental Siege Unit would do to your town?"
Blauvelt chuckled and took a long cigar from his vest pocket. He sniffed it, called out: "All right, Bobby-fire one!"
There was a muted clatter, a sharp click! from deep inside the vast bulk of the machine. A tongue of pale flame licked from the cannon's soot-rimmed bore. The big man leaned quickly forward, puffed the cigar alight. The audience whooped with laughter.
"Bobby does what he's told, that's all," Blauvelt said. "And not much of that." He showed white teeth in a humorless smile.