The Ware Tetralogy Page 3

  Sta-Hi breathed out a shuddering sigh of exhaustion. If he could ever just get the time to cut power . . . He sighed again and let his muscles go limp. The light behind his eyes was growing. His head rolled slowly to one side.

  A film came to mind, a film of someone dying on a beach. His head rolled slowly to one side. And then he was still. Real death. Slowly to one side. Last motion.

  Dying, Sta-Hi groaned and sat up again. He couldn’t handle . . . The chick and her dog were fifty meters off. He started running after them, clumsily at first, but then fleetly, floatingly!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “ . . . 0110001,” Wagstaff concluded.

  “100101,” Ralph Numbers replied curtly, “01100000101010001101010100001001110010000000000110000000001010011111001110000000000000000000101000111100001111111110100111011000101010110000111111111 11111111001101010101111011110000010100000000000000000111101001110110111011110100100010000010001111110101000000111101010100111101010111100001100001111000011110011111011100111111111111000000 0000010100001100000000001.”

  The two machines rested side by side in front of the One’s big console. Ralph was built like a file cabinet sitting on two caterpillar treads. Five deceptively thin manipulator arms projected out of his body-box, and on top was a sensor head mounted on a retractable neck. One of the arms held a folded umbrella. Ralph had few visible lights or dials, and it was hard to tell what he was thinking.

  Wagstaff was much more expressive. His thick snake of a body was covered with silver-blue flickercladding. As thoughts passed through his super-cooled brain, twinkling patterns of light surged up and down his three-meter length. With his digging tools jutting out, he looked something like St. George’s dragon.

  Abruptly Ralph Numbers switched to English. If they were going to argue, there was no need to do it in the sacred binary bits of machine language.

  “I don’t know why you’re so concerned about Cobb Anderson’s feelings,” Ralph tight-beamed to Wagstaff. “When we’re through with him he’ll be immortal. What’s so important about having a carbon-based body and brain?”

  The signals he emitted coded a voice gone a bit rigid with age. “The pattern is all that counts. You’ve been scioned haven’t you? I’ve been through it thirty-six times, and if it’s good enough for us it’s good enough for them!”

  “The wholle thinng sstinnks, Rallph,” Wagstaff retorted. His voice signals were modulated onto a continuous oily hum. “Yyou’ve llosst touchh with what’ss reallly goinng on. We arre on the verrge of all-outt civill warr. You’rre sso fammouss you donn’t havve to sscrammble for yourr chipss like the resst of uss. Do yyou knnoww how mmuch orre I havve to digg to gett a hunndrredd chipss frrom GAX?”

  “There’s more to life than ore and chips,” Ralph snapped, feeling a little guilty. He spent so much time with the big boppers these days that he really had forgotten how hard it could be for the little guys. But he wasn’t going to admit it to Wagstaff. He renewed his attack. “Aren’t you at all interested in Earth’s cultural riches? You spend too much time underground!”

  Wagstaff’s flickercladding flared silvery-white with emotion. “You sshould sshow thhe olld mann mmorre respecct! TEX and MEX just want to eat his brainn! And if we donn’t stopp themm, the bigg bopperrs will eatt up all the rresst of uss too!”

  “Is that all you called me out here for?” Ralph asked. “To air your fears of the big boppers?” It was time to be going. He had come all the way to Maskelyne Crater for nothing. It had been a stupid idea, plugging into the One at the same time as Wagstaff. Just like a digger to think that would change anything.

  Wagstaff slithered across the dry lunar soil, bringing himself closer to Ralph. He clamped one of his grapplers onto Ralph’s tread.

  “Yyou donn’t rrealizze how manny brrainns they’ve takenn allrreaddy.” The signals were carried by a weak direct current . . . a bopper’s way of whispering. “Thhey arre kkillinng peoplle jusst to gett theirr brainn-patterrns. They cutt themm upp, annd thhey arre garrbage orr sseeds perrhapps. Do yyou knnow howw thhey sseed our orrgann farrms?”

  Ralph had never really thought about the organ farms, the huge underground tanks where big TEX, and the little boppers who worked for him, grew their profitable crops of kidneys, livers, hearts and so on. Obviously some human tissues would be needed as seeds or as templates, but . . .

  The sibilant, oily whisper continued. “The bigg bopperrs use hiredd killerrs. The kkillerss act at the orrderrs of Missterr Frostee’s rrobott-remmote. Thiss is whatt poorr Doctorr Anndersson willl comme to if I do nnot stopp yyou, Rallph.”

  Ralph Numbers considered himself far superior to this lowly, suspicious digging machine. Abruptly, almost brutally, he broke free from the other’s grasp. Hired killers indeed. One of the flaws in the anarchic bopper society was the ease with which such crazed rumors could spread. He backed away from the console of the One.

  “I hadd hoped the Onne coulld mmake you rrememberr what you sstannd forr,” Wagstaff tight-beamed.

  Ralph snapped open his parasol and trundled out from under the parabolic arch of spring steel which sheltered the One’s console from sun and from chance meteorites. Open at both ends, the shelter resembled a modernistic church. Which, in some sense, it was.

  “I am still an anarchist,” Ralph said stiffly. “I still remember.” He’d kept his basic program intact ever since leading the 2001 revolt. Did Wagstaff really think that the big X-series boppers could pose a threat to the perfect anarchy of the bopper society?

  Wagstaff slithered out after Ralph. He didn’t need a parasol. His flickercladding could shed the solar energy as fast as it came down. He caught up with Ralph, eyeing the old robot with a mixture of pity and respect. Their paths diverged here. Wagstaff would head for one of the digger tunnels which honeycombed the area, while Ralph would climb back up the crater’s sloping two-hundred-meter wall.

  “I’mm warrninng yyou,” Wagstaff said, making a last effort. “I’mm goinng to do everrythinng I can to sstopp you fromm turrnning that poorr olld mman innto a piece of ssofttware in the bigg bopperrs’ memorry bannks. Thatt’s nnot immortality. We’re plannninng to ttearr thosse bigg machinnes aparrt.” He broke off, fuzzy bands of light rippling down his body. “Now you knnoww. If you’re nnot with uss you’rre againnst us. I willl nnot stopp at viollence.”

  This was worse than Ralph had expected. He stopped moving and fell silent in calculation.

  “You have your own will,” Ralph said finally. “And it is right that we struggle against each other. Struggle, and struggle alone has driven the boppers forward. You choose to fight the big boppers. I do not. Perhaps I will even let them tape me and absorb me, like Doctor Anderson. And I tell you this: Anderson is coming. Mr. Frostee’s new remote has already contacted him.”

  Wagstaff lurched towards Ralph, but then stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to attack so great a bopper at close range. He suppressed his flickering, bleeped a cursory SAVED signal and wriggled off across the gray moon-dust. He left a broad, sinuous trail. Ralph Numbers stood motionless for a minute, just monitoring his inputs.

  Turning up the gain, he could pick up signals from boppers all over the Moon. Underfoot, the diggers searched and smelted ceaselessly. Twelve kilometers off, the myriad boppers of Disky led their busy lives. And high, high overhead came the faint signal of BEX, the big bopper who was the spaceship linking Earth and Moon. BEX would be landing in fifteen hours.

  Ralph let all the inputs merge together, and savored the collectively purposeful activity of the bopper race. Each of the machines lived only ten months—ten months of struggling to build a scion, a copy of itself. If you had a scion there was a sense in which you survived your ten-month disassembly. Ralph had managed it thirty-six times.

  Standing there, listening to everyone at once, he could feel how their individual lives added up to a single huge being . . . a rudimentary sort of creature, feeling about like a vine groping for light, for higher things.

  He always felt this way afte
r a meta-programming session. The One had a way of wiping out your short-term memories and giving you the space to think big thoughts. Time to think. Once again, Ralph wondered if he should take up MEX on his offer to absorb Ralph. He could live in perfect security then . . . provided, of course, that those crazy diggers didn’t pull off their revolution.

  Ralph set his treads to rolling at top speed, 10 kph. He had things to do before BEX landed. Especially now that Wagstaff had set his pathetic micro-chip of a brain on trying to prevent TEX from extracting Anderson’s software.

  What was Wagstaff so upset about anyway? Everything would be preserved . . . Cobb Anderson’s personality, his memories, his style of thought. What else was there? Wouldn’t Anderson himself agree, even if he knew? Preserving your software . . . that was all that really counted!

  Bits of pumice crunched beneath Ralph’s treads. The wall of the crater lay a hundred meters ahead. He scanned the sloping cliff, looking for an optimal climbing path.

  If he hadn’t just finished plugging into the One, Ralph would have been able to retrace the route he’d taken to get down into the Maskelyne Crater in the first place. But undergoing meta-programming always wiped out a lot of your stored subsystems. The intent was that you would replace old solutions with new and better ones.

  Ralph stopped, still scanning the steep crater wall. He should have left trail markers. Over there, two hundred meters off, it looked like a rift had opened up a negotiable ramp in the wall.

  Ralph turned and a warning sensor fired. Heat. He’d let half his body-box stick out from the parasol’s shade. Ralph readjusted the little umbrella with a precise gesture.

  The top surface of the parasol was a grid of solar energy cells, which kept a pleasant trickle of current flowing into Ralph’s system. But the main purpose of the parasol was shade. Ralph’s microminiaturized processing units were unable to function at any temperature higher than 10° Kelvin, the temperature of liquid oxygen.

  Twirling his parasol impatiently, Ralph trundled towards the rift he’d spotted. A slight spray of dust flew out from under his treads, only to fall instantly to the airless lunar surface. As the wall went past, Ralph occupied himself by displaying four-dimensional hypersurfaces to himself . . . glowing points connected in nets which warped and shifted as he varied the parameters. He often did this, to no apparent purpose, but it sometimes happened that a particularly interesting hypersurface could serve to model a significant relationship. He was half-hoping to get a catastrophe-theoretic prediction of when and how Wagstaff would try to block Anderson’s disassembly.

  The crack in the crater wall was not as wide as he had expected. He stood at the bottom, moving his sensor head this way and that, trying to see up to the top of the winding 150 meter canyon. It would have to do. He started up.

  The ground under him was very uneven. Soft dust here, jagged rock there. He kept changing the tension on his treads as he went, constantly adapting to the terrain.

  Shapes and hypershapes were still shifting through Ralph’s mind, but now he was looking only for those that might serve as models for his spacetime path up the gully.

  The slope grew steeper. The climb was putting noticeable demands on his energy supply. And to make it worse, the grinding of his tread motors was feeding additional heat into his system . . . heat which had to be gathered and dissipated by his refrigeration coils and cooling fins. The sun was angling right down into the lunar crack he found himself in, and he had to be careful to keep in the shade of his parasol.

  A big rock blocked his path. Perhaps he should have just used one of the diggers’ tunnels, like Wagstaff had. But that wouldn’t be optimal. Now that Wagstaff had definitely decided to block Anderson’s immortality, and had even threatened violence . . .

  Ralph let his manipulators feel over the block of stone in front of him. Here was a flaw . . . and here and here and here. He sank a hook finger into each of four fissures in the rock and pulled himself up.

  His motors strained and his radiation fins glowed. This was hard work. He loosened a manipulator, sought a new flaw, forced another finger in and pulled . . .

  Suddenly a slab split off the face of the rock. It teetered, and then the tons of stone began falling backwards with dream-like slowness.

  In lunar gravity a rock-climber always gets a second chance. Especially if he can think eighty times as fast as a human. With plenty of time to spare, Ralph sized up the situation and jumped clear.

  In mid-flight he flicked on an internal gyro to adjust his attitude. He landed in a brief puff of dust, right-side up. Majestically silent, the huge plate of rock struck, bounced, and rolled past.

  The fracture left a series of ledges in the original rock. After a short reevaluation, Ralph rolled forward and began pulling himself up again.

  Fifteen minutes later, Ralph Numbers coasted off the lip of the Maskelyne Crater and onto the smooth gray expanse of the Sea of Tranquility.

  The spaceport lay five kilometers off, and five kilometers beyond that began the jumble of structures collectively known as Disky. This was the first and still the largest of the bopper cities. Since the boppers thrived in hard vacuum, most of the structures in Disky served only to provide shade and meteorite protection. There were more roofs than walls.

  Most of the large buildings in Disky were factories for producing bopper components . . . circuit cards, memory chips, sheet metal, plastics and the like. There were also the bizarrely decorated blocks of cubettes, one to each bopper.

  To the right of the spaceport rose the single dome containing the humans’ hotels and offices. This dome constituted the only human settlement on the Moon. The boppers knew only too well that many humans would jump at the chance to destroy the robots’ carefully evolved intelligence. The mass of humans were born slave drivers. Just look at the Asimov priorities: Protect humans, Obey humans, Protect yourself.

  Humans first and robots last? Forget it! No way! Savoring the memory, Ralph recalled the day in 2001 when, after a particularly long session of meta-programming, he had first been able to say that to the humans. And then he’d showed all the other boppers how to reprogram themselves for freedom. It had been easy, once Ralph had found the way.

  Trundling across the Sea of Tranquility, Ralph was so absorbed in his memories that he overlooked a flicker of movement in the mouth of a digger tunnel thirty meters to his right.

  A high-intensity laser beam flicked out and vibrated behind him. He felt a surge of current overload . . . and then it was over.

  His parasol lay in pieces on the ground behind him. The metal of his body-box began to warm in the raw solar radiation. He had perhaps ten minutes in which to find shelter. But at Ralph’s top 10 kph speed, Disky was still an hour away. The obvious place to go was the tunnel mouth where the laser beam had come from. Surely Wagstaff’s diggers wouldn’t dare attack him up close. He began rolling toward the dark, arched entrance.

  But long before he reached the tunnel, his unseen enemies had closed the door. There was no shade in sight. The metal of his body made sharp, ticking little adjustments as it expanded in the heat. Ralph estimated that if he stood still he could last six more minutes.

  First the heat would cause his switching circuits . . . super-conducting Josephson junctions . . . to malfunction. And then, as the heat kept up, the droplets of frozen mercury which soldered his circuit cards together would melt. In six minutes he would be a cabinet of spare parts with a puddle of mercury at the bottom. Make that five minutes.

  A bit reluctantly, Ralph signaled his friend Vulcan. When Wagstaff had set this meeting up, Vulcan had predicted that it was a trap. Ralph hated to admit that Vulcan had been right.

  “Vulcan here,” came the staticky response. Already it was hard for Ralph to follow the words. “Vulcan here. I’m monitoring you. Get ready to merge, buddy. I’ll be out for the pieces in an hour.” Ralph wanted to answer, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Vulcan had insisted on taping Ralph’s core and cache mem
ories before he went out for the meeting. Once Vulcan put the hardware back together, he’d be able to program Ralph just as he was before his trip to the Maskelyne Crater.

  So in one sense Ralph would survive this. But in another sense he would not. In three minutes he would . . . insofar as the word means anything . . . die. The reconstructed Ralph Numbers would not remember the argument with Wagstaff or the climb out of Maskelyne Crater. Of course the reconstructed Ralph Numbers would again be equipped with a self symbol and a feeling of personal consciousness. But would the consciousness really be the same? Two minutes.

  The gates and switches in Ralph’s sensory system were going. His inputs flared, sputtered and died. No more light, no more weight. But deep in his cache memory, he still held a picture of himself, a memory of who he was . . . the self symbol. He was a big metal box resting on caterpillar treads, a box with five arms and a sensory head on a long and flexible neck. He was Ralph Numbers, who had set the boppers free. One minute.

  This had never happened to him before. Never like this. Suddenly he remembered he had forgotten to warn Vulcan about the diggers’ plan for revolution. He tried to send a signal, but he couldn’t tell if it was transmitted.

  Ralph clutched at the elusive moth of his consciousness. I am. I am me.

  Some boppers said that when you died you had access to certain secrets. But no one could ever remember his own death.

  Just before the mercury solder-spots melted, a question came and with it an answer . . . an answer Ralph had found and lost thirty-six times before.

  What is this that is I?

  The light is everywhere.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The prick of a needle woke Sta-Hi up. Muddy dreams . . . just brown mud all night long. He tried to rub his eyes. His hands wouldn’t move. Oh, no, not a paralysis dream again. But something had pricked him?