The hood of the machine, sprung loose, canted upward, blocking out the driver’s vision of the road. The metal of the hood was twisted and battered, flapping in the wind. “Can’t hold it long,” Joe grunted, fighting the wheel.
He turned his head, a swift glance back at them, then swung it back again. Half of Joe’s face, Blaine saw, was covered with blood from a cut across the temple.
A shell exploded off to one side of them. Flying, jagged metal slammed into the careening car.
Hand mortars—and the next one would be closer!
“Jump!” yelled Joe.
Blaine hesitated, and a swift thought flashed in his mind. He couldn’t jump; he couldn’t leave this man alone—this Buttonholer by the name of Joe. He had to stick with him. After all, this was his fight much more than it was Joe’s.
Lucinda’s fingers bit into his arm. “The door!”
“But Joe …”
“The door!” she screamed at him.
Another shell exploded, in front of the car and slightly to one side. Blaine’s hand found the button of the door and pressed. The door snapped open, retracting back into the body. He hurled himself at the opening.
His shoulder slammed into concrete and he skidded along it; then the concrete ended, and he fell into nothingness. He landed in water and thick mud and fought his way up out of it, sputtering and coughing, dripping slime and muck.
His head buzzed madly and there was a dull ache in his neck. One shoulder, where he’d hit and skidded on the concrete, seemed to be on fire. He smelled the acrid odor of the muck, the mustiness of decaying vegetation, and the wind that blew down the roadside ditch was so cold it made him shiver.
Far up the road, another shell exploded, and in the flash of light he saw metallic objects flying out into the dark. Then a column of flame flared up and burned, like a lighted torch.
There went the car, he thought.
And there went Joe as well—the little man who’d waylaid him in the parking lot that morning, a little Buttonholer for whom he’d felt anger and disgust. But a man who’d died, who had been willing to die, for something that was bigger than himself.
Blaine floundered up the ditch, stooping low to keep in the cover of the reeds that grew along its edges. “Lucinda!”
There was a floundering in the water ahead. He wondered briefly at the thankfulness of relief that welled up inside of him.
She had made it, then; she was safe, here in the ditch—although to be in the ditch was only temporary safety. They might have been seen by the watching goons. They had to get away, as swiftly as they could.
The flare of the burning car was dying down and the ditch was darker now. He floundered ahead, trying to be as quiet as possible.
She was waiting for him, crouched against the bank. “All right?” he whispered and she nodded at him, her face making the quick motion in the darkness.
She lifted an arm and pointed; there, seen through the tightgrowing reeds of the marsh beyond the ditch, was Center, a great building that towered against the first light of morning in the eastern sky. “We’re almost there,” she told him softly.
She led the way slowly along the ditch and off into the marsh, following a watery runway that ran through the thick cover of sedges and rushes. “You know where you are going?”
“Just follow me,” she told him.
He wondered vaguely how many others might have followed this hidden path across the marsh—how many times she herself might have followed it. Although it was hard to think of her as she was now, dirty with muck and slime, wading through the water. Behind them they still could hear the shouts of the squad of goons that had been stationed at the block.
The goons had gone all out, he thought, setting up a block on a public highway. Someone could get into a lot of trouble for a stunt like that.
He’d told Lucinda that the goons would never dream of his going back to Center. But he had been wrong; apparently they had expected he’d try to make it back to Center. And they’d been set and waiting for him. Why?
Lucinda had halted in front of the mouth of a three-foot drain pipe, emerging from the bank just above the waterway. A tiny trickle of water ran out of it and dripped into the swamp. “How are you at crawling?”
“I can do anything,” he told her.
“It’s a long ways.”
He glanced up at the massive Center which, from where he stood, seemed to rise out of the marsh. “All the way?”
“All the way,” she said.
She lifted a muddy hand and brushed back a strand of hair, leaving a streak of mud across her face. He grinned at the sight of her—sodden and bedraggled, no longer the cool, unruffled creature who had sat across the desk from him. “If you laugh out loud,” she said, “I swear I’ll smack you one.”
She braced her elbows on the lip of the pipe and hauled herself upward, wriggling into the pipe. She gained the pipe and went forward on hands and knees.
Blaine followed. “You know your way around,” he whispered, the pipe catching up the whisper and magnifying it, bouncing it back and forth in an eerie echo.
“We had to, we fought a vicious enemy.”
They crawled and crept in silence, then, for what seemed half of eternity. “Here,” said Lucinda. “Careful.”
She reached back a hand and guided him forward in the darkness. A glow of feeble light came from a break in the side of the pipe, where a chunk of the tile had been broken or had fallen out. “Tight squeeze,” she told him.
He watched her wriggle through and drop from sight.
Blaine followed cautiously. A broken spear of the tile bit into his back and ripped his shirt, but he forced his body through and dropped.
They stood in a dim-lit corridor. The air smelled foul and old; the stones dripped with dampness. They came to stairs and climbed them, went along another corridor for a ways, then climbed again.
Then, suddenly, there were no dripping stones and dankness, but a familiar hall of marble, with the first-floor murals shining on the walls above the gleaming bronze of elevator doors.
There were robots in the hall; suddenly, the robots all were looking at them and starting to walk toward them.
Lucinda backed against the wall.
Blaine grabbed at her wrist.
“Quick,” he said. “Back the way …”
“Blaine,” said one of the advancing robots. “Wait a minute, Blaine.”
He swung around and waited. All the robots stopped. “We’ve been waiting for you,” said the robot spokesman. “We were sure you’d make it.”
Blaine jerked at Lucinda’s wrist. “Wait,” she whispered. “There’s something going on here.”
“Roemer said you would come back,” the robot said. “He said that you would try.”
“Roemer? What has Roemer got to do with it?”
“We are with you,” said the robot. “We threw out all the goons. Please allow me, sir.”
The doors of the nearest elevator were slowly sliding back.
“Let’s go along,” Lucinda said. “It sounds all right to me.”
They stepped into the elevator, with the robot spokesman following.
The car shot up and stopped. The door opened and they stepped out, between two solid lines of robots, flanking their path from the elevator to the door marked Records.
A man stood in the door, a great foursquare, dark-haired man whom Norman Blaine had seen before on a few occasions. A man who had written: If you should want to see me later, I am at your service.
“I heard about it, Blaine,” said Roemer. “I hoped you’d try to make it back; I figured you were that kind of man.”
Blaine stared back at him haggardly. “I’m glad you think so, Roemer. Five minutes from now …”
“It had to be someone,” said Roemer. “Don’t think about it too mu
ch. It simply had to come.”
Blaine walked on leaden feet between the file of robots, brushed past Roemer at the door.
The phone was on the desk and Norman Blaine lowered himself into the chair before it. Slowly he reached out his hand.
No! No! There must be another way. There must be another, better way to beat them—Harriet with her story; and the goons who were hunting him; and the plot with its roots reaching back through seven hundred years. Now he could make it stick—with Roemer and the robots he could make it stick. When he’d first thought of it, he had not been sure he could. His only thought then, he remembered, had been to get back to Center somehow, to get into this office and try to hold the place long enough, so he could not be stopped from doing what he meant to do.
He had expected to die here, behind some desk or chair, with a goon bullet in his body, and a shattered door through which the goons had finally burst their way.
There had to be another way—but there was no other way. There was only one way—the bitter fruit of seven hundred years of sitting quietly in the corner, with hands folded in one’s lap, and poison in one’s brain. He lifted the receiver out of the cradle and held it there, looking across the desk at Roemer.
“How did you do it?” he asked. “These robots? Why did you do it, John?”
“Giesey’s dead,” said Roemer; “so is Farris. No one has been appointed to their posts. Chain of command, my friend. Business agent, Protection, Records—you’re the big boss now; you’ve been the head of Dreams since the moment Farris died.”
“Oh, my God,” said Blaine.
“The robots are loyal,” Roemer went on. “Not to any man; not to any one department. They are conditioned to be loyal to Dreams. And you, my friend, are Dreams. For how long, I don’t know; but at the moment you are Dreams.”
They stared at one another for a long moment.
“The authority is yours,” said Roemer; “go ahead and make your call.”
So that was why, Blaine thought, the goons assumed I would return. That was why they’d set up the road block, not on one road only, perhaps, but on all of them—so that he could not get back and take over before someone could be named.
I should have thought of it, he told himself. I knew it. I thought of it this very afternoon, how I was third in line—
The operator was saying: “Number, please. Number, please. What number do you wish, please.”
Blaine gave the number and waited.
Lucinda had laughed at him and said: “You are a dedicated man.” Perhaps not those words exactly but that had been what she meant. Mocking him with his dedication; prodding him to see what he would do. A dedicated man, she’d said. And now, here finally, was the price of dedication.
“News” said a voice. “This is Central News.”
“I have a story for you.”
“Who is speaking, please?”
“Norman Blaine. I am Blaine, of Dreams.”
“Blaine?” A pause. “You said your name was Blaine?”
“That’s right.”
“We have a story here,” said Central News, “from one of our branches. We’ve been checking it. We held it up, in fact, to check it …”
“Put me on transcription. I want you to get this right; I don’t want to be misquoted.”
“You’re on transcription sir.”
“Then here you are …”
Then here you are.
Here is the end of it—
“Go ahead, Blaine.”
Blaine said, “Here it is, then. For seven hundred years, the Dreams guild has been carrying out a series of experiments aimed at the study of parallel cultures …”
“That is what the story we have says, sir; you are sure that that is right?”
“You disbelieve it?”
“No, but …”
“It’s true. We’ve worked on it for seven hundred years—under strict security because of certain continuing situations which made it seem unwise to say anything about it …”
“The story I have here …”
“Forget the story that you have!” Blaine shouted. “I don’t know what it’s all about; I called you up to tell you that we’re giving it away. Do you understand that? We’re giving it away. Within the next few days, we plan to make all our data available to a commission we’ll ask to be set up. Its membership will be chosen from the various unions, to assess the data and decide where use may best be made of it.”
“Blaine. Wait a minute, Blaine.”
Roemer reached out for the phone. “Let me finish it; you’re beat out. Take it easy now. I will handle it.”
He lifted the receiver, smiling. “They’ll want your authority, and all the rest of it.”
He smiled again. “This was what Giesey wanted, Blaine. That’s why Farris made him fire me; that’s why Farris killed him …”
Roemer spoke into the phone. “Hello, sir. Blaine had to leave; I’ll fill in the rest …”
The rest? There wasn’t any more. Couldn’t they understand? He’d made it very simple.
Dreams was giving up its one last chance at greatness. It was all Dreams had, and Norman Blaine had given it away. He had beaten Harriet and Farris and the hunting goons, but it was a bitter, empty victory.
It saved the pride of Dreams; and that was all it saved.
Something—some thought, some impulse, made him lift his head, almost as if someone had called to him from across the room.
Lucinda stood beside the door, looking at him, with a gentle smile upon her mud-streaked face, and her eyes were deep and soft. “Can’t you hear them cheering?” she asked. “Can’t you hear the whole world cheering you? It’s been a long time, Norman Blaine, since the whole world cheered together!”
Barb Wire Brings Bullets!
Clifford D. Simak sent a story named “Blood Buys Barb Wire” to Charles Tilden in late May 1945, and it appeared, under a new title, in the November 1945 issue of Ace-High Western Stories, where it was the lead story. I particularly like this tale because it evokes the feelings of being always outdoors, of living in the wind and, often, in the rain.
And it’s the only traditional western tale I’ve ever seen that contains the word robot, no doubt a slip-up on Cliff’s part. …
—dww
Chapter One
Fighting Odds—Three to One
Charley Cornish read trouble in the grim faces of the trio as they came slowly towards him. Bracing his back against the bar, he knew the thing he’d fought against had come, the thing he’d run a race with time against had happened. Here was the fate of Anderson out on the Yellowstone and the end of Melvin in the Bighorn foothills—the thing that had whisked those two into an eternity of silence was walking toward him in the tramping boots and the hard, set faces. Steve knew this was the showdown.
And just when he was on the verge of sending in an order that would make old man Jacobs’ eyes pop out of the dried-up skull that was his face.
Cornish’s eyes flicked swiftly to one side, saw the bottle standing on the bar. He knew that he could reach it with one swift motion if need be. But he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to such action.
The three stopped in front of him and stood silently, menacing shapes looming in the saloon’s twilight shadow, and behind him Cornish heard the wheezing breath of Steve, the bartender.
The tall, raw-boned giant in front was Titus, foreman of the Tumbling K.
And the scowling man must be Squint Douglas, who went everywhere with Titus. But the third man, with the flaming mop of red hair writhing from beneath his pushed back hat, was a total stranger.
“You’re Cornish?” asked Titus.
Cornish nodded.
“You sell barb wire?” asked Titus.
Cornish forced a grin upon his lips. “You gents in the market? No better wire to be
had anywhere.”
Titus interrupted him. “We don’t like barb wire,” he said.
“Now,” said Cornish, smoothly, “that’s a matter of opinion. Boys over on Cottonwood creek figure it is just the thing.”
“I told you,” snarled Titus, “that we don’t like no kind of wire.”
Cornish sucked in his breath. “Well, gents, that’s just too bad!”
His hand shot out for the bottle as Titus took the first step forward, swung it high above his head as Titus took the second. It whistled in the air as the angular foreman closed in on him, struck as groping fingers touched his shirt, struck and exploded with a dull, thudding sound, spraying broken glass and a spume of whiskey.
Titus slumped against Cornish’s knees, then slid to the floor.
Squint Douglas was coming in, a charging bull, with his face twisted into a mask of mingled anger and surprise. Behind him was the red-haired man, open mouth bawling something that failed to penetrate the roaring thunder of excitement that surged through Cornish’s mind.
Squint’s fist was a black ball aiming at his face and almost unconsciously Cornish swung up with his right hand to fend it off—a hand still clutching the broken whiskey bottle. Squint screamed as the jagged glass scraped across his face. He staggered backward blood streaming down his beard.
Cornish hurled the broken bottle at the red-haired man. The bottle slammed against the wall and smashed like a hundred tinkling bells all ringing at once.
Cornish picked up a chair and waited. Squint was crawling along the floor, whimpering. Blood ran down his beard and ripped onto the sawdust. The red-haired man was fumbling at his belt, fumbling in haste, his eyes smoky with fear and hatred.
“Give it here,” snapped a voice and Cornish flicked his eyes toward the bar.
Steve, the bartender, leaned across it and in his hand he held a heavy six-gun that pointed straight at the red-haired man.
“Toss it to me,” said Steve, “and take it easy when you do it. You hombres can wrestle around all that you’ve a mind to, but it just ain’t fair to be using guns.”
The red-haired man growled at him. “Keep out of this, Steve.”
“The hell I will,” said Steve. “Three to one is bad enough without dragging out your irons.”