Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy

He stooped suddenly and with a single powerful heave tore the box-lid open and sent it crashing back. Broome stepped up beside him and the two of them looked down on the thing that lay placidly inside, face up, passionless, its single eye unlit and as blank as Adam’s before he tasted the fruit. The front panel of its chest was open upon a maze of transistors, infinitely miniature components, thin silver lines of printed circuits. A maze of fine wiring nested around the robot, but most of it was disconnected by now. The robot was almost ready to be born.

“What are we waiting for?” Conway demanded harshly. “I said wake it up!”

“Not yet, General. It isn’t safe—yet. I can’t predict what might happen—”

“Won’t it work?”

Broome looked down at the steel mask winking with re­flected lights from the panel boards above it. His face wrin­kled up with hesitation. He bent to touch one finger to a wire that led into the massive opened chest at a circuit labeled “In-Put.”

“It’s programed,” he said very doubtfully. “And yet—”

“Then it’s ready,” Conway’s voice was flat. “You heard me, Broome. I can’t wait any longer. Wake it up.”

“I’m afraid to wake it up,” Broome said…

The General’s ears played a familiar trick on him. I’m afraid—I’m afraid . . . He couldn’t make the voice stop echoing. But fear is what all flesh is heir to, he thought. Flesh knows its limitations. It was time for steel to take over.

Pushbutton warfare used to look like the easy way to fight. Now man knows better. Man knows what the weak­est link is—himself. Flesh and blood. Man has the hardest job of all, the job of making decisions on incomplete data. Until now, no machine could do that. The computers were the very heartbeat and brain-pulse of pushbutton war, but they were limited thinkers. And they could shrug off re­sponsibility with an easy, “No answer—insufficient data.” After which it was up to man to give them what more they needed. The right information, the right questions, the right commands. No wonder the turnover in generals was so high.

So the Electronic Guidance Operator was conceived. The General looked down at it, lying quietly waiting for birth. Ego was its name. And it would have free will, after a fashion. The real complexity of the fabulous com­puters lies not in the machines themselves, but in the pro­graming fed into them. The memory banks are no good at all without instructions about how to use the data. And instructions are extremely complex to work out.

That was going to be Ego’s job from now on. Ego had been designed to act like the human brain, on only partial knowledge, as no machine before had ever done. Flesh and blood had reached their limits, Conway thought. Now was the hour for steel to take over. So Ego lay ready to taste the first bite of the apple Adam bit. Tireless like steel, resourceful like flesh, munching the apple mankind was so tired of munching…

“What do you mean, afraid?” Conway asked.

“It’s got free will,” Broome said. “Don’t you see? I can’t set up free will and controls. I can only give it one basic order— win the war . But I can’t tell it how. I don’t know how? I can’t even tell it what not to do. Ego will simply wake like—well, like a man educated and matured in his sleep, waking for the first time. It will feel needs, and act on its wants. I can’t control it. And that scares me, Gen­eral.”

Conway stood still, blinking, feeling exhaustion vibrate shrilly in his nerve ends. He sighed and touched the switch on his lapel microphone. “Conway here. Send Colonel Garden to Operation Christmas. And a couple of MPs.”

Broome burst into very rapid speech. “No, General! Give me another week. Give me just a few days—”

“You’ve got about two minutes,” Conway said. He thought, See how you like quick decisions. And this is only one. I’ve had five years of it. How long since I slept last? Well, never mind, never mind that. Make Broome decide. Push him. Resting !

Broome said, “I won’t do it. No. I can’t take the respon­sibility. I need more time to test—”

“You’ll go on testing till doomsday. You’ll never acti­vate it,” Conway said.

The door opened. The two MPs followed Colonel Gar­den into the room. Garden’s uniform looked sloppy, as usual. The man wasn’t built for a uniform. But the dark pouches under his eyes tempered Conway’s contempt. Gar­den hadn’t slept much lately, either. It was past time for all of them now—Ego must pick up the burden and justify its name.

“Arrest Broome,” Conway said. He ignored their star­tled looks. “Colonel, can you wake up this robot?”

“Wake it up, sir?”

Conway gestured impatiently. “Activate it, start it going.”

“Well, yes, sir, I do know how, but—”

Conway didn’t bother to listen. He pointed to the robot, and whatever else Garden was saying became a meaning­less yammer in his ears. Forty-eight hours, he thought-time enough to test it before the attack comes, if we’re lucky. And it had better work. He pressed thumb and finger to his eyes again to keep the room from swinging in slow, balancing circles around him.

Broome from the far end of nowhere said, “Wait, Gen­eral! Give me just one day more! It isn’t—”

Conway waved his hand, not opening his eyes. He heard one of the MPs say something, and there was a brief scuf­fle. Then the door closed. The General sighed and opened his eyes.

Garden was looking at him with the same doubt Broome had shown. Conway scowled and the other man turned quickly to the box where the robot lay. He stooped as Broome had done and touched with one finger the wire cord still leading into the spot marked “In-Put.”

“Once this is detached, sir, he’s on his own,” he said.

“The thing has its orders,” the General said briefly. “Go on, do something.”

There was a little pinging noise as Garden neatly de­tached the cord. He closed the steel plate that sealed Ego’s inwards. He ran his hands around the steel limbs to make sure all the nest of wires was clear. Then he got up and crossed to the instrument panel.

“Sir,” he said.

Conway didn’t answer for a moment. He was rocking just perceptibly to and fro, heel and toe, like a tower be­ginning to totter. He said, “Don’t tell me anything I don’t want to hear.”

Garden said composedly, “I don’t know just what to expect, sir. Will you tell me as soon as the robot starts to respond? Even the slightest—”

“I’ll tell you.” Conway looked down at the placid blind face. Wake up, he thought. Or else don’t. It doesn’t really matter. Because we can’t go on like this. Wake up. Then I can sleep. Or don’t wake up. Then I can die.

The round, flat cyclopean lens of the robot’s eye began to glow softly. In the same moment a rising hum of power from the instrument panel made the lights dim, and all the reflections shimmering from Ego’s steel surfaces paled and then burned strong again as auxiliary switches kicked in. One by one the lights on the panel went out. The quiver­ing needles rocked to and fro at zero and quieted.

The robot stared blankly up at the ceiling, not moving.

Conway, looking down, thought, Now it’s your turn. I’ve gone as far as a man can go. Take over, robot. Move!

The robot’s whole body shivered very, very slightly. The eye brightened until it sent a cone of light straight up at the ceiling. Without the slightest warning it lifted both arms at once out of the box and smashed its metal hands together with a clang that made both men jump. Conway gasped with surprise and released tension. Uselessly he said, “Garden!”

Garden opened a switch and the singing whine of power died. The robot was motionless again, but this time, like an effigy on a tomb, it lay with palms pressed together hard. The shivering began again and rhythmic clicking sounds like many clocks ticking out of phase could be heard faintly from deep inside the big steel cylinder of the body.