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about it that just might be the remains of Z-45. And now the sphere evidently
sighted their ship, for with startling speed it began to move toward them.
Once robots are told what berserkers look like, they do not forget, nor do
robots grow slow and careless. But radio equipment can be sloppily
maintained, and ever the dust drifts in around the edges of the system of
Planet A, impeding radio signals. Before theMiniDef's robot could
successfully broadcast an alarm, the forty-mile sphere was very close indeed,
and its grip of metal and force was tight upon the little ship.
The jester kept his eyes shut through a good deal of what followed. If they
had sent him out here to stop him laughing they had chosen the right spot. He
squeezed his eyelids tighter, and put his fingers in his ears, as the
berserker's commensal machines smashed their way into his little ship and
carried him off. He never did find out what they did with his robot guard.
When things grew quiet, and he felt gravity and good air and pleasant warmth
again, he decided that keeping his eyes shut was worse than knowing whatever
they might tell him. His first cautious peek showed him that he was in a
large shadowy room, that at least held no visible menace.
When he stirred, a squeaky monotonous voice somewhere above him said: "My
memory bank tells me that you are a protoplasmic computing unit, probably
capable of understanding this language. Do you understand?"
"Me?" The jester looked up into the shadows, but could not see the speaker.
"Yes, I understand you. But who are you?"
"I am what this language calls a berserker."
The jester had taken shamefully little interest in galactic affairs, but that
word frightened even him. He stuttered: "That means you're a kind of
automated warship?"
There was a pause. "I am not sure," said the squeaky, droning voice. The tone
sounded almost as if the President was hiding up there in the rafters. "War
may be related to my purpose, but my purpose is still partially unclear to
me, for my construction was never quite completed. For a time I waited where
I was built, because I was sure some final step had been left undone. At last
I moved, to try to learn more about my purpose. Approaching this sun, I found
a transmitting device which I have disassembled. But I have learned no more
about my purpose."
The jester sat on the soft, comfortable floor. The more he remembered about
berserkers, the more he trembled. He said: "I see. Or perhaps I at least
begin to see. What do you know of your purpose?"
"My purpose is to destroy all life wherever I can find it."
The jester cowered down. Then he asked in a low voice: "What is unclear about
that?"
The berserker answered his question with two of its own: "What is life? And
how is it destroyed?"
After half a minute there came a sound that the berserker computers could not
identify. It issued from the protoplasmic computing-unit, but if it was
speech it was in a language unknown to the berserker.
"What is the sound you make?" the machine asked.
The jester gasped for breath. "It's laughter. Oh, laughter! So. You were
unfinished." He shuddered, the terror of his position coming back to sober
him. But then he once more burst out giggling; the situation was too
ridiculous.
"What is life?" he said at last. "I'll tell you. Life is a great grim
grayness, and it inflicts fright and pain and loneliness upon all who
experience it. And you want to know how to destroy it? Well, I don't think
you can. But I'll tell you the best way to fight life-with laughter. As long
as we can fight it that way, it can't overcome us."
The machine asked: "Must I laugh, to prevent this great-grim-grayness from
enveloping me?"
The jester thought."No, you are a machine. You are not-" he caught himself,
"protoplasmic. Fright and pain and loneliness will never bother you."
"Nothing bothers me. Where will I find life, and how will I make laughter to
fight it?"
The jester was suddenly conscious of the weight of the cube that still hung
from his neck. "Let me think for a while," he said.
After a few minutes he stood up. "If you have a viewer of the kind men use, I
can show you how laughter is created. And perhaps I can guide you to a place
where life is. By the way, can you cut this cord from my neck? Without
hurting me, that is!"
A few weeks later, in the main War Room of Planet A, the somnolence of
decades was abruptly shattered. Robots bellowed and buzzed and flashed, and
those that were mobile scurried about. In five minutes or so they managed to
rouse their human overseers, who hurried about, tightening their belts and
stuttering.
"This is a practice alert, isn't it?" the Officer of the Day kept hoping
aloud. "Someone's running some kind of a test? Someone?" He was beginning to
squeak like a berserker himself.
He got down on all fours, removed a panel from the base of the biggest robot
and peered inside, hoping to discover something causing a malfunction.
Unfortunately, he knew nothing about robotics; recalling this, he replaced
the panel and jumped to his feet. He really knew nothing about planet
defense, either, and recalling this was enough to send him on a screaming run [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]