“How?” she asked.
Some of the foreign words interrupted, and not until another five minutes did the doctor have the opportunity to answer her question. “I’ll give it an order it is not equipped to carry out. It will break down. Stay out here and destroy the papers!”
The new voice said more words that went into storage, and the door opened. The robot knew, from its experience, that the laser destroyed. It destroyed a narrow strip of rock, four feet long, so that the rock could be separated from the mountain. It knew it would be destroyed if its dome were removed. It had no first order purpose any longer, only its second order purpose; it had to preserve itself. Whatever order Dr. Vianti issued would be contrary to the second order purpose; it would not obey a command that was contrary to the second order. It would destroy the doctor, who was a threat to its only order of purpose, i.e, to preserve itself. Its predictive value was based on its past experience. It raised the covering over the pencil-thin hole and a red light stabbed the air. It reached the doctor, and it severed his head from his shoulders.
Then the robot waited for a first order purpose to be given to it. It had no alternative; it could only function on a deductive level, achieving its goal on the basis of whatever premises were programmed into it. Without a first order purpose, it could only wait, unless threatened. The major did not threaten it in any way.
The girl screamed at it, and it scanned its circuits, searching to see if she posed a threat to its existence. She did not, Her words were recorded also, recorded and stored.
“It’s a killer! You’ll have to destroy it before it destroys everyone it gets near! It doesn’t know anything about right and wrong, good and bad. It’s an enemy of anyone who is near it!”
The men loaded it into a carrier, and they left Ramses with it, heading out into space, toward Venus and the army research installation.
Five
The man on the seat-bed moaned in his sleep; his legs twitched, his eyes moved behind closed lids. Beads of perspiration formed on his sunburned face, clustering in a line on his forehead, along his upper lip. A pale light shone in the dinghy, not visible from outside it around the fastenings over the round windows, not enough to do more than relieve the blackness, so that if he opened his eyes there would be something before them to see. Frantically he clung to things familiar.
His left leg jerked. He was walking among the rocks again, with a white glare of sun over him, and beams flashing around him. He walked between the beams, and smelled the heat…
Another time, the smell of heat.
A force has been spotted behind our men, on the mountainside, Captain.
Forget them, Tracy. Savages with arrows, miles out of range. Our orders are to clean out the village. Get to it.
Yes, sir, Captain L’Taugh.
He waved the men on, away from the ship, into a slip between rocks bordering a dried stream-bed. Out of sight, he motioned for them to stop, and he crept back. High up the mountainside a stream of ant-like figures appeared, staggering under loads. Motionless he watched them for five minutes until they started to throw down the loads, and the mountainside came down, thundering faster and faster, unstoppable, to cover the captain and the half-dozen men he had kept with him at the base of the mountain. Trace’s face remained expressionless as he backed up the way he had come.
Captain L’Taugh is dead. We’re going back and scour that mountain…
Yes, sir, Lieutenant!
Maximum fire range! Burn ‘em out! Yes, sir, Lieutenant! Yes, sir!
The trees had no time to turn colour even . -.. puffs of smoke arose, the ground shivered, blackened, turned grey, glazed, steam, heat… the wind bringing wafts of overheated air that smelled of kilns and ovens… keep maximum range. Yes, even this close! Those damned huts are made out of clay, good insulation, crisp them… no one to escape… air smelling of kilns, and of ovens… no time to scream, or to turn colour, just puffs of smoke and steam, and inerasable after-images of contorted figures caught in grotesque poses before they were nothing… kilns, and ovens… overheated air, wind-borne ashes, acrid smoke in his hair, in his eyes, in his mouth.
… heroic action, assuming full command… medal. Captain Tracy…
But the smell of acrid smoke on his skin, the odour of the kilns, the taste of ovens… Captain Tracy. Captain Tracy. Could have warned him. I guessed what they were going to do… Captain Tracy. The trees turned brown from the heat; grasses withered, remaining upright, rustling in the wind that rose to snap them off and fling them in his face. Red-hot clay huts, crackling as they cooled throughout the night, sounding like explosions. Burned earth, grey, sterile, powdery, rising in the wind, spiralling, slapping against his face, leaving it lined and streaked, touched with grey death, hot grey death that smelled of kilns, and of ovens.
The man groaned and half sat up, reassured by the light in the dinghy, by the quietness of the warning equipment, by the steady sound of his own heart, and of the air in his nose. He was too hot, feverish after the long rough walk in the sun, and too tired to get up for a drink of water. His legs ached; he lay back down, his eyes closing again. He had been hurt once, by a spear, by God! A spear! He thought of the hospital where he had spent fever-ridden days, his muscles contracting spasmodically as a result of the poison of the spear, his heart beating erratically while hallucinations danced before his eyes. Fever dreams, visions, voices… Cost us two hundred good men, Trace, but we got ‘em! Cave-man age, cannibals… We got ’em! Every goddam last one! Swim, rest, get well, boy ..
Swim… The water was soft and blue-green, a river with a swift current, cold, clear, clean… It washed the scar and made it not throb, washed the dust and heat from his muscles and from his brain… Swimming lazily on his back, a friendly yellow sun over the edge of a broad-leafed tree, violet and blue flowers dipping down to the water, mosses… The smell of running water, moist rich dirt, green things growing luxuriously.
Come on out, Trace. Come on!
You swim like a fish.
She dived out of sight, and he felt a tug on his ankle, and the rush of water in his mouth and nose, and laughing, catching her…A smooth sun-browned body, full breasted, bare, with strands of black hair clinging to wet cheeks, across the red mouth, hiding one shining black eye.
“Lar!” Trace moaned, stirring in his sleep. There was no perspiration on his face then; it looked as dry as yellowed parchment, and a pulse throbbed on the side of his neck. He squirmed on the hot bed and tugged at the suit that he had not taken off, pulling it open, getting out of it, all without opening his eyes. “Lar,” he whispered again, back in the water with her, feeling her cool body under his hands, remembering the way the blue and violet flowers bent over to taste of the fresh, cold water, the way they reflected where the waters were still, how the images shattered and flew apart when he tossed pebbles among them.
It pleases you to smash things, doesn’t it, Captain Tracy?
Her voice as cool and fluid as the water, her body sinuous with water beads shining like diamonds, a line of them meeting, running in a wavering silvery line down her browned back as she walked away from him. The way her flesh rippled as she walked, the suggestion of muscles under her firm, round buttocks…