James White: Second Ending

The robot ticked at him.

“I want food,” said Ross, making it simple and non-ambiguous. The robot left.

The first six pages of the diary were heavy going, not only because they dealt mainly with details of administration in Pellew’s almost unreadable writing, but because they were dated only a few months after Ross had gone into Deep Sleep and so contained no information likely to help in his present situation. He began cheating a little, skipping five, seven, twenty pages ahead. He read:

Communications ceased with Section F two hours ago and we have not been able to raise the others for over a week. For purposes of morale I have suggested that this may be due to broken lines caused by the earth tremors, which have been felt even down here. I have ordered the maintenance robots to slot heavy metal girders across the elevator shaft so as to make it impossible for anyone to take the cage up. There are still a few shortsighted, quixotic fools who want to form a rescue party…

Ross remembered an instructional circular from last night which had begun, “ During the Emergency … ” Apparently this part of the diary dealt with that Emergency, but he had skipped too far ahead. He was turning the pages back slowly when the robot arrived with six food cans.

He opened one and set it on the empty ashtray so as not to mark Pellew’s desk. When he went back to the ledger the large, stiff pages had risen up and rolled past his place. Ross inserted his finger and flattened a page at random. It said:

I took Courtland out of hibernation last week. In his present condition he will live only a few months so I have as good as killed him. The fact that he has told me several times that he doesn’t mind only makes me feel worse — his bravery pointing up my cowardice. But I need help, and he was one of the best cyberneticists of his time. He is working on a modification of our Mark 5 Ward Sisters for me.

I wanted a robot with judgment and initiative and the Mark 5B seems to have those qualities. Courtland insists that it hasn’t, that he has merely increased its data-storage capacity, increased its ability to cross-index this memory data, and made some other changes which I can’t begin to understand. It does NOT have a sense of humor, but only gives this impression because it takes everything it is told literally. Despite all he says, Courtland is very proud of this new robot — he calls it Bea — and says that if he had proper facilities, or even a few more months of life, he could do great things.

I think he has done great things already. If only Ross can carry on. It will be his problem soon.

Ross felt his scalp begin to prickle. Seeing his own name staring up at him had been a shock, but what was the problem mentioned?

“How long since you talked to Dr. Pellew?” he asked the robot suddenly.

“Twenty-three years and fifteen days, sir.”

“Oh, as long ago as that. When is he due to be awakened?”

The robot began to tick.

“That is a simple question!” began Ross angrily, then stopped. Maybe it wasn’t a simple question, maybe… “Is Pellew dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ross swallowed. He said, “How many, both patients and staff, are left?”

“One, sir. You.”

He had been hungry and had meant to eat. Ross began spooning the contents of the food can into his mouth, trying to pretend that it had not happened. Or maybe these were the blind involuntary movements of a body which has died and does not yet realize it. Pellew was dead, Alice was dead, Hanson, everyone. Claustrophobia was something which normally had not bothered Ross, but now suddenly he wanted out. Everyone he knew — and so far as his mind was concerned, he had known and spoken to them only two days ago — was dead and buried, most of them for hundreds of years. The hospital had become a vast, shining tomb staffed by metal ghouls, and he was buried in it. He was suddenly conscious of five miles of earth pressing down on him. But he was alive! He wanted out!

Ross did not realize that he had been shouting until the robot said, “Dr. Pellew told me that you might behave in a non-logical manner at this time. He said to tell you that the future of the human race might depend on what you do in the next few years, and not to do anything stupid in the first few hours.”

“How can I get out?” said Ross savagely.

A human being would have avoided the question or simply refused to reply, but the Ward Sister was a robot and had no choice in the matter. Even so, while it was giving the information requested it managed to insert a truly fantastic number of objections to his going. The elevator shaft was blocked, there was danger of contamination and the robot’s basic programming forbade it to allow Ross to endanger himself…

“Do you know what going mad is?” said Ross, in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own. “Have you had experience of mental instability in humans?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is against your programming to force me, by your inaction, into that state?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get me to the surface!”

It took three hours.

The Ward Sister ticked a lot and generally got into the nearest approach that a machine could manage to a tizzy. Clearing the elevator shafts — there were five altogether — required the help of heavy maintenance robots and these had been put into a state of low alert two centuries ago and would respond only to direct orders from a human being. But they weren’t nearly so bright as the Sister type and, while a single word was enough to set them in motion, it required a great many words to make them understand what he wanted. And the Ward Sister refused to let him into the cage until a full load of Cleaners had tested it first. These delays, by forcing him to think coherently, had a diluting effect on his original feeling of panic, but even he knew that his actions were not those of a sane man.

During the waiting periods between ascents he read parts of the ledger, and now knew what the Emergency had been. A war. According to Pellew it had lasted five months and had been fought to the bitter end by opposing automatic devices, because after the first week no human being could have survived on the surface…

Ross wanted out. Desperately, he wanted away from the unhuman attentions of robots and the sterile death of the wards. He did not expect to find living people on the surface, but he would settle for living things. Trees, insects, grass, weeds. And a sky with clouds and a sun in it and cold, natural air on his face. He didn’t think there would be any survivors, but he never stopped hoping…

Each leg of the journey upward was the same. With the Ward Sister at his heels he would stumble out of the cage, yelling for a robot native to the section. When one appeared, invariably another Sister, he would ask, “How many human beings alive in this section?” When the inevitable reply came back he would pause only briefly, then say, “Where are your maintenance robots?” Within minutes he would be surrounded by a mechanical menagerie of repair and construction robots, all ticking at him or asking for clarification of their instructions in voices that were so human that it made Ross’s flesh creep. Eventually they would be made to clear the way up to the next section.

Once he came to a level which he recognized as being the lowest section of the hospital of his pre-Sleep days. In this section the dust of centuries lay like gray snow in the corridors and the robots he summoned became the centers of choking, blinding dust storms.

The first level, which was less than one hundred feet beneath the surface, was a shambles. Lighting, elevators, even the native robots were so much wreckage. Great, gaping cracks grew across walls and ceiling like jagged vines and there had been many cave-ins. But there was also a tunnel, sloping upward steeply and with a fuzzy patch of gray light showing at its other end. In the robot’s spotlight Ross could not tell whether the people of this level had dug their way out before they died or someone had dug down in an attempt to escape the holocaust above. He began climbing frantically, the Sister — whose three wheels were not suited to such a rough surface — falling slowly behind him.