Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

Tensely it listened to the ground. The purring stopped for a time as the enemy paused. Minutes later, the motion resumed.

It awoke an emissary ear twenty kilometers to the southwest, and commanded the ear to listen, and to transmit the patterns of the purring noise. Two soundings were taken, and from them, it derived the enemy’s precise position and velocity. The enemy was proceeding to the north, into the edge of the demiworld. Lurking anger flared into active fury. It gunned its engines on the crag. It girded itself for battle.

"Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout. I assume your radio rig is unoperative. If you can hear us, get this: we’re proceeding north to five miles short of magnapult range. We’ll stop there and fire an autocyb rocket into zone Red-Red. The warhead’s a radio-to-sonar transceiver. If you’ve got a seismitter that’s working, the transceiver will act as a relay stage. Over."

It ignored the vibratory pattern and rechecked its battle gear. It introspected its energy storage, and tested its weapon activators. It summoned an emissary eye and waited a dozen minutes while the eye crawled crablike from the holy place to take up a watch-post near the entrance of the cave. If the enemy remnant tried to emerge, the emissary eye would see, and report, and it could destroy the enemy remnant with a remote grenade catapult.

The purring in the ground was louder. Having prepared itself for the fray, it came down from the crag and grumbled southward at cruising speed. It passed the gutted hulk of the Moonwagon, with its team of overturned tractors. The detonation of the magnapult canister had broken the freightcar sized vehicle in half. The remains of several two-legged enemy appurtenances were scattered about the area, tiny broken things in the pale Earthlight. Grumbler ignored them and charged relentlessly southward.

A sudden wink of light on the southern horizon! Then a tiny dot of flame arced upward, traversing the heavens. Grumbler skidded to a halt and tracked its path. A rocket missile. It would fall somewhere in the east half of zone Red-Red. There was no time to prepare to shoot it down. Grumbler waited—and saw that the missile would explode harmlessly in a nonvital area.

Seconds later, the missile paused in flight, reversing direction and sitting on its jets. It dropped out of sight behind an outcropping. There was no explosion. Nor was there any activity in the area where the missile had fallen. Grumbler called an emissary ear, sent it migrating toward the impact point to listen, then continued South toward the pain perimeter.

"Salvage Sixteen, this is Aubrey’s runabout," came the long-wave vibrations. "We just shot the radio-seismitter relay into Red-Red. If you’re within five miles of it, you should be able to hear."

Almost immediately, a response from the cave, heard by the emissary ear that listened to the land near the tower: "Thank God! He he he he—Oh, thank God!"

And simultaneously, the same vibratory pattern came in long-wave patterns from the direction of the missile-impact point. Grumbler stopped again, momentarily confused, angrily tempted to lob a magnapult canister across the broken terrain toward the impact point. But the emissary ear reported no physical movement from the area. The enemy to the south was the origin of the disturbances. If it removed the major enemy first, it could remove the minor disturbances later. It moved on to the pain perimeter, occasionally listening to the meaningless vibrations caused by the enemy.

"Salvage Sixteen from Aubrey. I hear you faintly. Who is this, Carhill?"

"Aubrey! A voice —A real voice—Or am I going nuts?"

"Sixteen from Aubrey, Sixteen from Aubrey. Stop babbling and tell me who’s talking. What’s happening in there? Have you got Grumbler immobilized?"

Spasmodic choking was the only response.

"Sixteen from Aubrey. Snap out of it! Listen, Sawyer, I know it’s you. Now get hold of yourself, man! What’s happened?"

"Dead… they’re all dead but me."

"STOP THAT IDIOTIC LAUGHING!"

A long silence, then, scarcely audible: "O.K., I’ll hold onto myself. Is it really you, Aubrey?"

"You’re not having hallucinations, Sawyer. We’re crossing zone Red in a runabout. Now tell me the situation. We’ve been trying to call you for days."

"Grumbler let us get ten miles into zone Red-Red, and then he clobbered us with a magnapult canister."

"Wasn’t your I.F.F. working?"

"Yes, but Grumbler’s isn’t. After he blasted the wagon, he picked off the other four that got out alive—He he he he… Did you ever see a Sherman tank chase a mouse, colonel?"

"Cut it out, Sawyer! Another giggle out of you, and I’ll flay you alive."

"Get me out! My leg! Get me out!"

"If we can. Tell me your present situation."

"My suit… I got a small puncture—Had to pump the leg full of water and freeze it. Now my leg’s dead. I can’t last much longer."

"The situation, Sawyer, the situation! Not your aches and pains."

The vibrations continued, but Grumbler screened them out for a time. There was rumbling fury on an Earthlit hill.

It sat with its engines idling, listening to the distant movements of the enemy to the south. At the foot of the hill lay the pain perimeter; even upon the hilltop, it felt the faint twinges of warning that issued from the tower, thirty kilometers to the rear at the center of the world. It was in communion with the tower. If it ventured beyond the perimeter, the communion would slip out-of-phase, and there would be blinding pain and detonation.

The enemy was moving more slowly now, creeping north across the demi- world. It would be easy to destroy the enemy at once, if only the supply of rocket missiles were not depleted. The range of the magnapult hurler was only twenty-five kilometers. The small spitters would reach, but their accuracy was close to zero at such range. It would have to wait for the enemy to come closer. It nursed a brooding fury on the hill.

"Listen, Sawyer, if Grumbler’s I.F.F. isn’t working, why hasn’t he already fired on this runabout?"

"That’s what sucked us in too, Colonel. We came into zone Red and nothing happened. Either he’s out of long-range ammo, or he’s getting cagey, or both. Probably both."

"Mmmp! Then we’d better park here and figure something out."

"Listen… there’s only one thing you can do. Call for a telecontrolled missile from the Base."

"To destroy Grumbler? You’re out of your head, Sawyer. If Grumbler’s knocked out, the whole area around the excavations gets blown sky high… to keep them out of enemy hands. You know that."

"You expect me to care?"

"Stop screaming, Sawyer. Those excavations are the most valuable property on the Moon. We can’t afford to lose them. That’s why Grumbler was staked out. If they got blown to rubble, I’d be court-martialed before the debris quit falling."

The response was snarling and sobbing. "Eight hours oxygen. Eight hours, you hear? You stupid, merciless—"

The enemy to the south stopped moving at a distance of twenty-eight kilometers from Grumbler’s hill—only three thousand meters beyond magnapult range.

A moment of berserk hatred. It lumbered to-and-fro in a frustrated pattern that was like a monstrous dance, crushing small rocks beneath its treads, showering dust into the valley. Once it charged down toward the pain perimeter, and turned back only after the agony became unbearable. It stopped again on the hill, feeling the weariness of lowered energy supplies in the storage units.