Philip Dick: The Last Of The Masters

"All right," the robot said. "You can go.” The men left. Bors turned to face the woman on the bed.

"A machine,” Silvia whispered, white-faced. "You’re a machine.”

Bprs nodded slightly without speaking.

Silvia shifted uneasily on the bed. She was weak. One leg was in a transparent plastic cast. Her face was bandaged and her right arm ached and throbbed. Outside the window, the late afternoon sun sprinkled through the drapes. Flowers bloomed. Grass. Hedges. And beyond the hedges, buildings and factories.

For the last hour the sky had been filled with jet-driven ships. Great flocks that raced excitedly across the sky toward distant hills. Along the highway cars hurtled, dragging guns and heavy military equipment. Men were marching in close rank, rows of gray-clad soldiers, guns and helmets and bacteria masks. Endless lines of figures, identical in their uniforms, stamped from the same matrix.

"There are a lot of them, Bors said, indicating the marching men.

"Yes.” Silvia watched a couple of soldiers hurry by the window. Youths with worried expressions on their smooth faces. Helmets bobbing at their waists. Long rifles. Canteens. Counters. Radiation shields. Bacteria masks wound awkwardly around their necks, ready to go into place. They were scared. Hardly more than kids. Others followed. A truck roared into life. The soldiers were swept off to join the others.

"Thry're going to fight,” Bors said, "to defend their homes and factories."

"All this equipment. You manufacture it, don’t you?”

"That's right. Our industrial organization is perfect. We’re totally productive. Our society here is operated rationally. Scientifically. Were fully prepared to meet this emergency”

Suddenly Silvia realized what the emergency was. "The League! One of us must have got away." She pulled herself up. "Which of them? Penn or my father?"

"I don't know,” the robot murmured indifferently.

Horror and disgust choked Silvia. "My God,” she said softly. "You have no understanding of us. You run all this, and you’re incapable of empathy. You’re nothing but a mechanical computer. One of the old government integration robots.” "That’s right. Two centuries old.”

She was appalled. "And you've been alive all this time. We thought we destroyed all of you!"

"I was missed. I had been damaged. I wasn't in my place. I was in a truck, on my way out of Washington. I saw the mobs and escaped.” "Two hundred years ago. Legendary times. You actually saw the events they tell us about. The old days. The great marches. The day the governments fell.”

"Yes. I saw it all. A group of us formed in Virginia. Expens, officials, skilled workmen. Later we came here. It was remote enough, off the beaten path.”

"We heard rumors. A fragment Still maintaining itself. But we didn't know where or how."

"I was fortunate," Bors said. "I escaped by a fluke. All the others were destroyed. It’s taken a long time to organize what you see here. Fifteen miles from here is a ring of hills. This valley is a bowl—mountains on all sides. We’ve set up road blocks in the form of natural slides. Nobody comes here. Even in Fairfax, thirty miles off, they know nothing.”

"That girl. Laura.”

"Scouts. We keep scout teams in all inhabited regions within a hundred mile radius. As soon as you entered Fairfax, word was relayed to us. An air unit was dispatched. To avoid questions, we arranged to have you killed in an auto wreck. But one of you escaped.”

Silvia shook her head, bewildered. "How?” she demanded. "How do you keep going? Don’t the people revolt?” She struggled to a sitting position. "They must know what's happened everywhere else. How do you control them? They’re going out now, in their uniforms. But— will they fight? Can you count on them?”

Bors answered slowly. "They trust me,” he said. "I brought with me a vast amount of knowledge. Information and techniques lost to the rest of the world. Are jet-ships and vidscanners and power cables made anywhere else in the world? I retain all that knowledge. I have memory units, synapsis-coils. Because of me they have these things. Things you now only as dim memories, vague legends.”

"What happens when you die?" "I won’t die! I’m eternal!” "You’re wearing out. You have to be carried around. And your right arm. You can hardly move it!” Silvia’s voice was harsh, ruthless. "Your whole tank is pitted and rusty.”

The robot whirred; for a moment he seemed unable to speak. "My knowledge remains,” he grated finally. "I’ll always be able to communicate. Fowler has arranged a broadcast system. Even when I talk—” He broke off. "Even then. Everything is under control. I’ye organized every aspect of the situation. I've maintained this system for two centuries. It’s got to be kept going!”

Silvia lashed out. It happened in a split seconds The boot of her cast caught the chairs on which the robot rested. She thrust violently with her foot and hands; the chairs teetered, hesitated—

"Fowler!” the robot screamed. Silvia pushed with all her strength. Blinding agony seared through her leg; she bit her lip and threw her shoulder against the robot’s pitted hulk. He waved his arms, whirred wildly, and then the two chairs slowly collapsed. The robot slid quietly from them, over on his back, his arms still waving helplessly.

Silvia dragged herself from the bed. She managed to pull herself to the window; her broken leg hung uselessly, a dead weight in its transparent plastic cast. The robot lay like some futile bug, arms waving, eye-lens clicking, its rusty works whirring in fear and rage.

"Fowler!" it screamed again. "Help me!”

Silvia reached the window. She tugged at the locks; they were sealed. She grabbed up a lamp from the table and threw it against the glass. The glass burst around her, a shower of lethal fragments. She stumbled forward—and then the repair crew was pouring into the room.

Fowler gasped at the sight of the robot on its back. A strange expression crossed his face. "Look at him!”

"Help me!” the robot shrilled. "Help me!"

One of the men grabbed Silvia around the waist and lagged her back to the bed. She kicked and bit, sunk her nails into the man’s cheek. He threw her on the bed, face down, and drew his pistoL "Stay there," he gasped.

The others were bent over the robot, getting him to aa upright position.

"What happened?" Fowler said. He came over to the bed, his face twisting. "Did he fall?"

Silvia’s eyes glowed with hatred and despair. "I pushed him over. I almost got there.” Her chest heaved. "The window. But my leg—”

"Get me back to my quarters!" Bors cried.

The crew gathered him up and carried him down the hall, to his private office. A few moments later he was sitting shakily at his desk, his mechanism pounding wildly, surrounded by his papers and memoranda.

He forced down his panic and tried to resume his work. He had to keep going. His vidscreen was alive with activity. The whole system was in motion. He blankly watched a subcommander sending up a cloud of black dots, jet bombers that shot up like flies and headed quickly off.

The system had to be preserved. He repeated it again and again. He had to save it. Had to organize the people and make them save it. If the people didn’t fight, wasn’t everything doomed?

Fury and desperation overwhelmed him. The system couldn’t preserve itself; it wasn’t a thing apart, something that could be separated from the people who lived it. Actually it was the people. They were identical; when the people fought to preserve the system they were fighting to preserve nothing less than themselves.

They existed only as long as the system existed.

He caught sight of a marching column of white-faced troops, moving toward the hills. His ancient synapsis-coils radiated and shuddered uncertainly, then fell back into pattern. He was two centuries old. He had come into existence a long time ago, in a different world. That world had created him; through him that world still lived. As long as he existed, that world existed. In miniature, it still functioned. His model universe, his recreation. His rational, controlled world, in which each aspect was fully organized, fully analyzed and integrated.