Artur Mirer

The Old Road

[From the cycle Artificial Jam.]

T

he car was one of the latest models; a marvel rather than a car.

‘It’s too new, that’s its trouble,’ said Philip Saton.

It was too fast and too steady on the bends and forever trying to catch up with the car in front and knock it down. The semi-automatic driver panel took up a good half of the windscreen, but unfortunately it had never been fully developed. As it was, it was impossible to take more than a short rest, and only then over the straight sections. There is nothing more tiresome than driving a machine which is too good.

Behind them stretched sections of trans-continental roads, the green stars of the polarized world, the roar of police helicopters and notices several feet high saying, ‘Minimum speed 100 mph’. Now they were tearing along the dark, empty road, along the narrow concrete bridge which brought the two regions of eternity together.

This was the highway, a two-hundred-mile stretch of desolation without a single oncoming vehicle. The road rolled evenly on ahead, lit up beneath the headlights, and dark in the distance. The bleached trunks of poplar trees ran on and on like the walls of a never-ending corridor. The poplars reflected the beam of the headlamps and the cabin was lit by a dim twinkling light. Maria was asleep; her head lolled against the high back of her seat, and her left hand was resting on his knee.

This was how they always travelled. To Philip it seemed as if they had been travelling like this since birth; in fact they had met only two years ago, in that wretched drivers’ camp at the last outpost in Chile. He had but looked at her and that was that; he’d been struck on the spot, as if a charge of dynamite had exploded, but neither had then known how things would turn out. In fact she might have known, and certainly knew something already, but he had still been concerned with the road and with the whole question of passes, and could only look at Maria while eating his omelet.

Maria had brought him a steak and said, ‘There’s a real piece of meat.’

‘You think so!’ he had answered. ‘I’d say that it was oxtail.’

He had swallowed the last bit of omelet and smiled. He knew the effect this smile had on women, but Maria stayed indifferent. She didn’t even look at him, just hid her hands under her apron. Perhaps there was something she wanted to hide, but still he didn’t understand.

‘That fellow sitting at the counter - the one with the moustache - is he your husband?’

She had made her way to the counter without answering him, and his heart had jumped and started pounding as it did when he was drunk, but he had only been drinking orange juice. Later she brought his coffee, sat down on the empty, chair, and in the morning they had left. Maria had already been sitting in the cab of the twelve-ton ‘Maka’, and he had still been worried about the man with the moustache, the one at the counter. The man kept saying, ‘Where will I find a waitress in the mountains?’

The drivers were warming up their diesel engines and ringing blows echoed against the snow-covered slopes sounding as if a battle was being fought. The lorries began to turn round in the narrow square of the park and set off down the road. The gorge was full of blue smoke and the roaring of cold engines, and the proprietor still kept on, ‘Where will I find a waitress?’ Perhaps he was not the proprietor at all, but in service like Maria.

Ever since then they had been on the road. Since that faraway time. Wasn’t there a song? ‘In the mountains, in rain and snow, my dear friend, my lifelong friend’. It’s sung down there - in the fields, in rain and snow, but the mountains are dearer to me.

‘Philip, don’t go to sleep. Philip ...’

He woke up. The car had meandered on to the left-hand side of the road. Maria was sitting with closed eyes as before. She sleeps soundly, dreaming dreams she does not understand, but should he start to doze over the wheel, she would squeeze his knee and say, ‘Philip, Philip, don’t go to sleep ...’

‘You so-and-so,’ said Philip, ‘Mistress Sorceress, how’s it going?’

‘Could be better,’ answered Maria in a clear voice.

Philip moved his foot sharply, the shields whistled against the concrete, and the car came back to the middle of the highway. He turned a light on.

Maria sat, looking very white. ‘Don’t worry, Philip,’ she said. ‘Everything’ll be all right.’

‘What, now?’

He tried to clear his throat quietly. Maria smiled.

‘Don’t be frightened. It’s some time yet. It’s the first birth; there’s still four hours or more.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Then let’s get a move on. Will it hurt you?’

‘Perhaps. Where do you want to go?’

‘To a doctor,’ said Philip.

He had woken up completely, but his back and arms still felt tremors of sleep. He had not slept for a long time; that was bad.

‘So we’re going to the doctor’s in a stolen car, are we, Philip?’

‘Let’s go. You need a doctor.’

Maria did not answer. She was half lying on the wide seat, with her eyes shut, arid Philip had no idea what to do with her. Brave, he thought, like the female of the grey kangaroo while she was still with young, while the young was still with her, only you never saw kangaroos except in zoos, and Maria was right here.

‘My brave kangaroo,’ said Philip, ‘just wait until we get to a doctor, all right?’

‘Just don’t go to sleep. I’m not an alarm clock any longer.’

‘What a lovely little alarm clock,’ said Philip. He drove the car along the empty road, still hoping that a house or something would turn up, even a filling station, but the road lay as bare as before, between the pyramids of the poplars, and beneath the yellow moon. It was as straight as the rays of light from the moon. It suddenly seemed to Philip that that was how it would always be, that they were never going anywhere, that they were following the road to nowhere.

Then he began talking so he could hear something besides the voices of the road, the rush of air over the top of the car, and the sh-sh-ha, sh-sh-ha as the poplars brushed past.

‘Headlights ... it seems like all the headlights in the world so that right now, look, the whole road is overflowing with light and you can see every little rut for a mile ahead. And damn the police now. They can get on with it. We are dirty immigrants, or something of the sort, but we’ve tricked them all and can allow ourselves some luxury. And that’s that.’

‘Don’t babble,’ said Maria. ‘You’re at the wheel.’

‘I won’t be much longer. Sit up just a little.’

Holding the wheel with his left hand, Philip fastened Maria to her seat, passing the strap under her armpits, and pressed the pedal. Right up to the lock.

The car staggered. The engine howled, and began to rev faster and faster. The car settled on to its back wheels. The shock absorbers rasped. The broad, flat saucer skimmed along the centre of the highway, like an aeroplane on a low-level flight, and the while poplar walls wooshed by, and the air groaned and burst against the windows. Two hundred miles per hour.

Maria opened her eyes. She never disturbed him at the wheel, never started up a conversation. Now as they sped along the road to somewhere at breakneck speed, she was quiet and watched the road ahead for a long half-hour ‘sh-sh-sh’. A hundred miles along the straight road, along the old, safe road leading they knew not where.

They tore by a military post: people, helmets, unnatural stances as in a black and white photograph, and once more the empty road, their eyes seeing only green circles from red lamps.

‘Manoeuvres,’ said Philip, and almost immediately some old-fashioned road signs flashed by, but the post was already far behind them, about four miles ... A bend, a bend at last, and round it was an incomprehensible sign for automatic drivers.

They turned. The moon sped to the left, over some trees. In front there was darkness and emptiness once more. Philip held on for fifty miles and so they went on for another quarter of an hour or so; then in front a clear blue sheen of electric welding rose shining into view; to the left, behind the trees appeared a fence, a long fence with no openings, but still a fence, and there, there was a ‘beacon’ blinking beside some gates. Philip turned on his searchlights.

The gates were open.

On its side between the gateposts was an automatic van. The front wheels were touching the left post of the gates; between the gates a locator button was glowing red.

Philip suddenly remembered everything at once. The road, bordered by poplars, the bend and the flat perimeter road along the fence, and, on the posts, the skull and crossbones.

‘Let’s go,’ said Philip; ‘Do you remember I told you all about a lunatic works, centre two-two-one or something of the sort?’

‘I remember.’

‘How are you, Maria?’

She was lying back again, shutting her eyes. Philip leant over her and found that he could not hear her breathing.

Then he really moved. He acted with concentration, unhurriedly; he was like a kangaroo himself, brought to bay by wild dogs. He drove the car along the edge of the highway, and tried to reverse it into the opening between the post and the van! There was an advertising slogan on the roof of the van; it shone straight out at him under the beam of the headlights: JAM - JAM. The blue and red letters disappeared one by one as he manoeuvred the car into the narrow gap.

He still had to edge backwards, so that he could straighten the wheels and avoid the van’s bumper. As they went through the entrance between the buildings, Philip took out a radial pistol from the drawer under the ventilator window. The window clicked and rose, making a narrow gun space stretching the full width of the cab of the car.

A cold dusty wind blew into the car. It carried a voice. It said ‘Philip’, as if it had been waiting for him all the time. All the long years that Philip had been wandering around the world.

‘Oh, mother,’ said Philip. ‘Is that you, Mister Centre?’

‘Fast forward,’ answered Centre. ‘Forward.’

With his free hand Philip held on to Maria. It seemed as if the car rose by itself and moved forward along the drive, narrowly lit by the full moon.

Until the first crossroads Philip kept the motor at low revs. He had sensed almost immediately, and then seen in his mirror, an indistinct movement in the depth of the passage. Behind them, against the fence, lit up by the moon, loomed the black, misshapen silhouette of a machine noiselessly following.

‘Faster...’

‘Don’t look round. It never does to be frightened. Keep your head ...’ thought Philip; ‘so I’ve come here again, where I shouldn’t, but why? ...’

‘Faster...’

The car rushed across a square shadow thrown by the moon. Maria began to stir and said, as she took a long breath:

‘I’m not frightened, with you I’m not frightened.*

Philip didn’t have time to look relieved.

In front was a dead alley. A light-coloured wall clearly lit by the moon. Philip had no time to consider anything, but the brakes were already screaming, the wheel was shaking and tore itself from his hand, and ... ‘Forward!’ said the Voice loudly. Philip screwed up his eyes, let his foot off the brake, was thrown against the back of his seat, and, at that moment, as the shadow of the bonnet jumped on to the wall, a black opening appeared, the shadow faded into blackness and the Voice said, ’Stop!’

The gates crashed shut. The car braked gently in the pitch darkness.

‘We’ve arrived somewhere,’ said Philip. ‘How are you?’

He put a light on and drew in his breath. Maria hung heavily on to a strap, supporting her face in her hands; her face was slightly blue, but her eyes were open.

‘Has it begun?’

‘No, but it hurts

At this he felt worse than ever. She was in pain and he could do nothing. He was not allowed to do anything; and he was fine, in prime health, except for the beating of his heart.

Philip leaned out, keeping a firm hold on himself and shouted into the darkness,

‘Mister Centre! ...’

The Voice was silent. Some kind of mechanism buzzed round the ‘Chrysler’, polished locator mirrors flashing as they turned. One by one the gates clicked.

‘Mister Centre! Do you hear me, Centre?’

‘I can hear ...’

Philip suddenly realized. Centre did not answer mere exclamations. He was no man. He was a brain. He moved around in his glass prison, and a thousand machines in a hundred buildings clanked their iron teeth in a simple rhythm. Somewhere in the middle of all this he and Maria were lost. As deep inside the complex as they could be.

This realization came to Philip in a flash. Suddenly he thought, ‘It’s not alive! Surely you understand?’

He realized all this and was horrified, but with stubbornness born of desperation, continued what he was saying:

‘Mister Centre, my wife must give birth. Do you understand what I’m talking about? She’s giving birth to a child. I can’t help her, she needs a doctor.’

‘You’re mad,’ whispered Maria. ‘It’s certainly not alive. How can it understand you?’

‘Lights on. Forward,’ the Voice answered them.

Stocky, awkward robots moved aside, leaving the way clear. In the yellow light of the headlamps they could see the links of soft caterpillar tracks rolling around, and the lenses of radial guns flashed in the chinks of the front screens. Military works ... Philip went over everything with the same feverish clarity - the van upturned by the gates, the black machine which had driven behind them and which, judging by all he had seen, was controlled by Centre, and the military post on the road. Things were bad and could hardly be worse. He carefully moved the car along the cleared space, and remembered how, when they were travelling on the road, they had turned on the radio and heard an extract from some general’s Press conference.

‘We will do our duty,’ said one general, and then someone asked, ‘General, are your actions not caused by the fact that Centre disobeyed your order and switched to the production of jam?’

... The machine rolled quietly to the depths of the works. Here the robots stood in rows and tiny machines rolled fussily along on their tracks. The assembly hall for automatic military machines, that was where they had ended up ...

‘Bad, really awful,’ thought Philip ... don’t know why ... it was bad for us in the south, wasn’t it? But no, I go and drag Maria here and bolt from the police without considering where we were going. There’s surely a hospital in the camp for immigrants ... now he regretted that, but in the morning he could not bear the thought of Maria lying on a prison hospital bunk. He was uneasy here, very uneasy.

‘Left turn.’

When they had turned left, Philip looked at Maria. She was sitting, sitting quite normally except that her head was to one side as if she was trying to hear something.

‘Forward, five miles per hour.’

Maria began to speak quietly. Philip heard her say distinctly, ‘Ma-ri-a’. He looked at her, surprised. She was speaking very quietly with a weak, embarrassed smile: ‘Yes, yes ... the last hour, contractions. No, I don’t know, no ...’

‘Maria!’

‘Quiet,’ said the Voice. ‘I’m talking to Maria. Straight on. Now into the siding. Stop. Do not get out. Wait.’

The Voice commanded, Philip drove the car, and beside him Maria spoke almost inaudibly: ‘The first, yes ... oh no, no, don’t! Good, thank you ...’

‘Wait.’

Maria sighed, and lay back on his shoulder.

‘Philip, unfasten me. I’m not frightened.’

‘Did he question you?’ Philip spoke in a whisper. He was completely dumbfounded.

‘Yes.’

‘What about?’

‘Everything ... like a doctor.’

‘Why didn’t I hear?’

‘It was inside,’ said Maria, and Philip finally understood. He had not realized earlier that the Voice was heard directly inside the ears, inside the head.

‘Oh yes, Maria,’ thought Philip. How lucky he’d been; just once in his life he had been really lucky. There are no more women like her. This really was endurance, and she always showed it, so he did not do anything silly. No reproaches, no regrets; but perhaps they were all like that in the mountains?

He still thought that the last twenty-four hours could have broken anyone. Not Maria. When he had got mixed up in that fight near Sal’pa, she had brought a bit of piping and slipped it into his hand, and, as always, ‘Twenty-four hours to get out’ and so on and on, and they had come north without visas, and all within twenty-four hours of the birth, and not once had she shown annoyance ...

.. . Not more than five minutes had passed, yet on the small square lit by the ‘Chrysler’s’ headlamps various machines were already crowding: vans, trucks, some elephantine articulated robots. The little automatons poured down from platform tracks, and spread out on all sides with their long antennae waving.

Maria watched them, her forehead pressed against the glass.

‘They’re like lobsters. Do you remember in Lima we ate lobsters, and the kitchen boy brought them straight to our table?’

‘Of course I remember,’ answered Philip. ‘Those were crawfish, not lobsters.’

Maria began to laugh and clapped her hands.

‘Look, Philip! Look what’s happening! I feel better right now, you know ...’

‘Thank God,’ thought Philip, ‘but what on earth is going on?’

The ‘lobsters’ were spreading a light stiff carpet over the floor, unwinding long rolls of plastic rouleaux. Behind them moved a square automaton like a cine-camera - two pellets jutted out like cassettes from the flashing body. It crawled along the joins of the carpet welding the strips of plastic together.

Slightly smaller automatons, like centipedes, bustled to the edges of this flooring. Simultaneously in ten places they set up dull white pipes on the floor, and up each one scrambled an automaton dragging a similar pipe behind it and one group waited beneath in a queue.

‘Oh, poor things,’ said Maria.

‘Clever things,’ said Philip.

The ‘centipedes’ lost no time in coming down. They fell from above doubling up their little paws, while beneath them other ones hurried up, and the pipes grew like bamboo shoots in a heavy shower. A leggy automaton, like a many-armed Don Quixote, was already dragging semi-transparent panels along the row of pipes, and fastening them, so that they acted as walls. While these came down around the carpet, the ‘lobsters’ were carrying straight and curved plates, pipes and pivots from a barrel-shaped object.

‘Philip, report on all the details of Maria’s condition,’ said the Voice. After a few seconds it spoke quite differently, fast and tonelessly: ‘The Chief requires time for the processing of information’.

‘I don’t understand at all,’ muttered Philip to Maria. ‘It seems to have taken you seriously. Maybe it’s even building the enclosure for you.’

‘It’s called a “maternity ward”, Phil. Shall I answer?’

‘Yes.’ Feeling quite confused he opened the cab door. Maria did not seem at all frightened. She even looked happy. Poor girl. Nobody had ever worried about her.

‘Okay,’ said Philip to himself. ‘You do your bit. And watch out!’

He got out of the car and pulled his pistol out through the window. The length of cord was enough to pull six or seven feet to either side, and bring down any iron creature which might try to bother his wife. In the ‘Chrysler’ he felt defenceless from behind, because the window did not open there.

Maria smiled at him while she listened to the Voice, and suddenly she blushed and looked confused. Philip rushed towards her, but Maria again smiled, waved her hand to him, and began to speak, stopping from time to time to moisten her lips.

‘God knows what’s happening,’ thought Philip, and asked:

‘Mister Centre, what are you trying on my wife?’

As he listened for the answer, he saw that Maria was still speaking, that the ‘lobsters’ and ‘centipedes’ were welding the last joints, and the grey, stocky mechanisms were creeping slowly towards the doors. At the same time the Voice, with its usual velvety intonation, was answering him, Philip Saton: ‘Maria will receive qualified medical help’.

Philip’s head was exhausted because he understood that Centre did millions of different things at once without getting muddled; he also realized that Centre answered his chief question, even though he had asked such a lot of nonsense, and he also understood that two years ago he had understood nothing.

‘Mister Centre, will it be a doctor or a midwife?’ He was ashamed of his stupid stubbornness, but was unable to stop himself.

The Voice answered the last question again without waiting for Philip to finish talking nonsense. ‘Medical help will be rendered by automatons of the first and second class of subordination. The Chief Centre gives information containing a bloc of medical information confirmed by a human consultant.’

‘Will I be able to help, Mister Centre?’

‘The place will be sterilized.’

‘Does that mean I can’t?’

‘Impossible,’ said Centre and again the quick, monotonous voice pattered in his ears. ‘The place is prepared, go, go - medicines received on the second landing. Go. The door is on the south side.’

‘Where do you think south is here?’ asked Maria, getting out of the car.

‘Perhaps we’re wasting our time, Maria, perhaps we’re better on our own?’

‘You were right,’ said Maria.

‘What was I right about?’ Philip knew that she was going away now, and that there was nothing to be done; he clung to her and suddenly realized that she was facing all the things he could never understand or know about. He led her to the door and asked hopefully:

‘Do you want a drink?’ but Maria had already let go of his hand. He stayed by the door and watched an automaton closing the door from outside.

After a minute the Voice announced, ‘You may speak to Maria’.

‘Hey, how are you?’ shouted Philip.

‘We’ll call him Centre,’ said Maria distinctly. ‘He says it will be a boy.’

‘Can’t be,’ said Philip. ‘We wanted a girl.’

Maria began to laugh. They were silent for a bit. Suddenly she said, ‘Just wait a little, Phil. Okay?’ Then she was silent. He could hear her air in the wide, white pipes, water bubbling behind the screen, and nothing else. Philip tiptoed near the cubicle, still holding the pistol. The cord was stretched to its limit and pulled at his hand.

To distract himself he began to look around the great, dark hall. Machines must be able to see in the dark. There was not one small window, airhole or lamp in the whole building; only here in the far corner did a dull box shine with an even glow, and to the side ran a passage of dull, greenish light. The ‘Chrysler’s’ headlamps were still burning. Probably by a lucky coincidence, everything that moved, rang or rumbled from that corridor on the right belonged to the everyday production life of the works, and on the left even the smallest machine had some kind of relationship to what was happening in the little ‘maternity ward’.

All around everything went peacefully in a regular rhythm. The truck that delivered the ‘lobsters’ had already gone, the small tracked vans with the building materials had disappeared. The multi-handed automaton noiselessly unloaded the last little van, which was the size of a small suitcase. Thin tentacles carried flat, round, square little boxes, with bright inscriptions, through the air. This load was lowered carefully on to a chute which was attached to the wall of the ‘maternity ward’. The top was flashing like the wheel of a water mill.

While he was looking around, Philip noticed dark spots creeping along the wall: the automatic ‘centipedes’. Some were crawling along, and some sitting motionless. A large number were gathered in the top right-hand corner where pipes went through to the ‘maternity ward’: at least ten pipes of various diameters, and on each one sat three or four automatons energetically waving their antennae. One ‘centipede’ travelled along a vertical wall transcribing a complete circle. Fifty automatons sat in the strip of light from the headlamps, their small peepholes shot with the thick green light...

Philip moved his lips. His mouth was very dry and tasted like burnt honey. He was not frightened, but he had never in his life felt like this before: like the last man on an empty earth. It was cold in the hall, every now and then a tremor would shake his legs. His eyes shut of their own accord and in them he saw a large empty earth with two dots: Maria and himself.

He took several deep breaths, and hunched his shoulders. That was a help. His eyes opened. He leaned over the warm bonnet of the car and pulled his jacket up round his neck. He began to feel warmer. ‘I’ll be all right,’ Philip impressed on himself, as he watched the mechanisms moving behind the gates.

He stood like that for several minutes, then began to shake again, and delirium set in. The mechanisms went through the gates like monks from a cathedral after evensong. He wanted to cross himself and hit his shoulder with the pistol. At the same moment a satanic howl rang out under the roof.

He threw himself at the box. The pistol cord very nearly dislocated his hand and he came back to his senses. Once again he noticed a cigar-shaped apparatus sweeping past under the ceiling.

Maria was still silent.

‘Maria... Maria, why don’t you say anything?’

Nobody took any notice. The automaton continued its strange dance on the wall above his head.

‘Maria!’

He threw himself at the door but the second voice caught him halfway and drummed in his ear, ‘The woman giving birth is under electro-sedation. Condition normal. Stimulator ready.’

Philip forced himself to stop. ‘Mister Centre, who’s talking to me, you or somebody else?’

‘Automatic coordinator of the first rank.’

‘How is Maria?’

‘The woman giving birth is under electro-sedation ...’

‘Stop it!’ shouted Philip. ‘Centre, I’m asking you! Centre! Tell me how Maria is at once!’

He kept the pistol at the ready to open the door with the ray, like the lid of a jam jar. He had already raised his hand and aimed the barrel along the edge at a sharp angle so that the ray went to earth. In the fraction of a second it took him to fix the pistol he caught a glimpse of Maria lying with her white face tossed back, and then he saw that she was not there, and automatons fussing round an empty nothing, and to this empty nothing they were administering medicines and giving electro-sedation ...

‘Philip,’ said Centre quickly. ‘Don’t be mad. Sit in the car. Sit in the car at once. The magnetic field will injure you.’

‘How’s Maria?’

‘Come away from the box, sit in the car.’ Centre’s voice was back to normal. ‘Maria is sleeping, labour still has not started. In the morning you will see her and the child.’ The Voice stopped and Philip sighed, lowered his pistol, and obediently went to the car, but he did not open the door.

He put his hand through the open window and turned on the light. For some reason he understood that Centre was not indifferent, any more than he, Philip, was. This had shown in its intonation, in the sound of its voice. Centre had spoken like a normal human being. Announcers and radio commentators speak in a special way; they have voices conditioned to speaking for everyone at once and not to anyone in particular, and Centre had spoken like that before. Then, when he said, ‘Don’t be mad’, he addressed Philip with alarm like an adult talking to a child; the tone of his voice confirmed this.

‘Okay,’ said Philip. ‘I believe you, Mister Centre.’

He had calmed down almost completely and, even laughed when Centre answered didactically: ‘My structure is immeasurably more reliable than any human organization’.

‘Okay,’ repeated Philip, ‘I believe you’, and he opened the boot to get out a flask, but at that moment sharp blows rang out in the hall - metal on metal. He threw the flask into the boot and seized the pistol.

There was a crack, a crash. The gates collapsed revealing a crowd of mechanisms, moving at the exit, and in the passage, lit by a piercingly deep light, flashed an elephantine apparatus, huge, glittering, with raised articulated probosces. The light went out. Motors roared furiously. The mechanisms burst outside, thundering by the huge apparatus collapsed across the passageway.

Philip climbed on to the bonnet and watched. He held the pistol at the ready. The automatons crowded round the gate like sheep round a pen; the hall emptied, brightened and along the light floor bustled little collector-machines herding out the last automatons.

‘Coordinators of the first rank have been insubordinate,’ reported the Voice, as if talking to himself.

‘So it seems,’ said Philip, ‘but what about the mammoth?’

He hurriedly glanced round at the white box, not daring to imagine what would happen if this ‘mammoth’ crashed into that flimsy construction.

‘Oh Mister Centre, Mister Centre, your reliability is extremely unreliable…’ The machine did not, however, come farther than the gate.

‘A military robot tried to enter, briefed by a coordinator ...’ Centre pronounced a multi-figured number.

Philip paid no attention to this. Why bother with this number of something he didn’t understand?

‘A similar robot followed you from the entrance,’ continued Centre.

‘Why?’

‘Intending destruction.’

‘Why, Mister Centre?’

‘Basic programme. The presence of people here is not tolerated,’ answered Centre, and Philip realized that he had not fully understood that.

‘But why are the machines getting out of here?’

‘I must destroy the coordinator’s military robots. With this aim the place where you now are was rebuilt for the production of military automatons which are now getting down to work. After two hours all the military machines will be destroyed, the coordinators will be switched off.’

‘So,’ thought Philip; ‘that’s it. Mechanical war ... according to all the rules, with raids on the military works.’ They could get on with what they were doing, but he must protect Maria. It was lucky that there happened to be a pistol in the ‘Chrysler’. He put a rug on the top of the car and lay down, taking aim at the gates. The leggy automatons were hanging the struts of the gates in place, walking like people on stilts, or flamingoes. Philip had not even got the flask; he desperately wanted a drink, and he felt terribly depressed and alone lying on the hard roof looking into the darkness, the damned darkness in which he had no idea what was going on.

‘Centre 100 increased the coordinators’ freedom,’ said the Voice.

Philip questioned and listened, and kept a hold on himself, not allowing himself a glance round at the lighted box; this went on for an unbearably long time. Philip turned from hope to despair. He questioned and listened to things which usually interested him, but at that time nothing at all mattered except Maria. It seemed as if he was asking and answering himself. He thought about himself and his turning from hope to despair. This literary phrase choked all his thoughts, and he said it aloud to be rid of it. The time crawled along like heavy syrup.

Philip took off his wristwatch, put it in front of him on the rug and forced his eyes away from the luminous green figures, and looked at the gates. The ‘Don Quixotes’ had disappeared. In front of the gates there was a mass of immobile silhouettes, made by the small automatons, but time passed so slowly. Wretched minutes dripping into emptiness. Each circle, which the small hand described, thickened the ice-cold bitterness of the darkness, and from the walls came a strong smell of cold. When the darkness exploded with a roar and a whistle in the twenty-second minute Philip was not even surprised. Something had to happen.

‘Everything’s gone mad,’ yelled Philip without hearing his own voice. ‘What’s that line of automatons flying over your works?’

‘Military aircraft,’ answered Centre.

‘Normal manoeuvres?’ asked Philip. He very much wanted to believe that it was manoeuvres. ‘Have they suddenly started to plot against you?’

‘No. I am friendly towards people.’

The aircraft roared over the works. Many aircraft. Holding the pistol in his numbed hand, Philip turned to one side so he could see the box all the time; the whistling roar over the roof changed to a high-pitched scream, the whole area trembled and the automatons fell clanking from the galleries.

The first explosions boomed. The ceiling trembled, lumps of plaster rained down. Philip was blasted from the cab, he had been quite wrong but the box was intact. A mechanical voice chimed in his ears, hammers were beating all over, snarling blows kept coming, breaking into each other, ‘boom boom boom boom’. And the line again, the roar of the aircraft coming out of their dives.

‘Witches’ hammers,’ thought Philip. ‘That’s what they are, witches hammers. And here are the witches.’

In the open gateway stood the ‘mammoths’. A bomb, falling in front of the wall, threw Philip to the ground and knocked out the gates.

‘A boy, a boy has been delivered. We are removing electro-sedation; condition of mother normal, child normal.’

‘Congratulations!’ shouted Philip. ‘We couldn’t have chosen a better time.’ Philip knelt down and balanced his pistol hand on the bonnet of the car.

He aimed at the great head of a military automaton. The ‘mammoth’ had already gone through the gates, and was moving carefully along the passage. The lilac ray struck, exposed the plating, and the ‘mammoth’ moved silently forward, lifted four arms and lay down before the gates.

The second fell across the corpse of the first one. The next two stopped to drag them out of the way. Philip watched patiently as the machines pulled and swung their comrades.

‘Pull, push,’ said Philip. ‘We must get away with all the family.’

He knew just the same that nothing would happen to them now. It simply wasn’t possible.

A bomb exploded very near. Out of the corner of his left eye Philip saw that the box had been shaken, but it still stood, and in the sudden silence the ‘centipedes’ tumbled about the floor.

The ‘mammoths’ did not move any more, they came to a standstill in midstep. The piercing light stopped flashing, and it became quite dark and quiet as in a forest. The aeroplanes could not be heard - the machines could not be heard.

‘It all seems to be over,’ said Philip. ‘Hey, how’s Maria there?’

He aimed the pistol to render the ‘mammoths’ helpless, just in case, and suddenly heard Maria. ‘Philip, where are you?’

‘I’m here,’ shouted Philip. ‘I’m coming to you right now!’

‘Good. They won’t let me get up and they’ve got the child…’

‘Good . . .’

‘Open the door ... We’ve got to get out. Do you hear?’

Philip got up, leaning on a wheel, and at that moment bombs hit the roof of the hall. The ceiling cracked and the crimson glow of fire lit everything up. The whistle of a departing aeroplane reached Philip together with explosions and the cracking of the concrete walls; he lay on the steppe, on the parched grass, and heard the breeze rustling through it, and saw a grey kangaroo running like the wind with long jumps.

* * * *

‘Where did that machine come from?’ Captain Gilverstein took Bord by the hand and stopped him almost by force.

‘What’s it matter?’ said Bord. ‘One more riddle. The thousand and first.’

Bord stood over the crater with a completely expressionless face. To everyone who came to him with questions: what to take for analysis, how to deal with the large mechanisms, he answered almost without moving his lips, ‘Do as you like, my friend’.

Only to Koris did he say, ‘You ought to have stopped me’.

‘Look,’ there was no calming Gilverstein, ‘that’s one of the latest Chryslers. It’s lying in the middle of the road, in the crater, and its back is all caved in. It’s lying in the crater. So it was thrown there by another explosion.’

‘You’re so perceptive,’ said Bord.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing,’ said Bord. ‘Sorry, I forgot your name, Captain.’

‘Gilverstein.’

‘For some reason I thought it was Guildenstern.’

‘Gil-ver-stein,’ said the Captain.

‘Sorry,’ said Bord.

‘Wait a moment!’ Gilverstein snatched the microphone. ‘Dawn, dawn. This is Gilverstein.’

‘I’m receiving you, Captain.’

‘Tell me, what car went through the cordon last night?’

‘At once, Captain ... A Chrysler. Number not known.’

‘Colour?’

‘Brown.’

‘Thank you. Out.’

‘That’s the car,’ said Gilverstein triumphantly. ‘It’s a very expensive machine. Very. For millionaires, hand-made. Interesting, where’s the owner? He must be a very rich man. The number will tell us at once who owns the machine.’

The Captain passed on the number to ‘Dawn’ and crawled to the bottom of the crater.

‘I’ve never seen such a car. Still, no good daydreaming ... here’s a book... edition de luxe.’

‘I’ve got a car like that in the car park,’ said Bord, surprising himself.

‘Have you indeed ...’ Gilverstein looked at Bord with respect.

Bord shrugged his shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m asking indiscreet questions. They haven’t told me your name, sir.’

‘It’s not important. You were ordered to guard me, although I don’t need guarding.’

The Captain’s face fell. He dropped his hand from the book. Hammer of the Witches, some stupid, mystic rubbish.

‘Poor fool,’ thought Bord. ‘Why hurt him, he’s not guilty of anything.’

‘Try to open the left-hand window panel, Captain. The dictaphone must be underneath it. Maybe it’s in working order.’

‘I’d like to take that book for myself,’ said the Captain.

Bord stood in the middle of the path, facing the north corner of the fence, the place where the town had stood until yesterday. Now, burnt blocks of walls were all that remained.

‘In working order,’ said Gilverstein in a constrained voice…‘I’ll switch on. Can you hear, sir?’

‘No . . .’

‘I’ll switch on.’

The dynamo whistled. A tape was unwinding in the dictaphone. Bord shook his head: there would be no whistle if the dictaphone was in good working order. Bord was one of the two men who owned the patent on this dictaphone. The whole point was that the tape began to move only at the sound of a human voice. The invention had first made Bord famous, but Gilverstein did not know that.

‘A fine invention!’ said the Captain. ‘Now it’ll begin ...’

The dictaphone whistled, clicked, ‘Philip, why did we take this car?’

‘It’s a good car . . .’

Click, ‘... you don’t joke with the immigrant police. You have to get away quickly so as not to get caught. There’s a cordon in front, hold on ...’

Click, whistle ... ‘Do you like it here?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Mmm ... nor me.’

Click. ‘The main road. Looks as if they’ve lost us.’

‘It’s all quite clear.’ The Captain switched off the recording, waved his hands. ‘Immigrants stole this Chrysler and wanted to hide here. Serves them right.’

Bord sat down on the edge of the crater, on the damp ground. ‘With your permission, I’ll hear the tape through to the end, Captain.’

Gilverstein looked at Bord’s mouth. It seemed as if the dictaphone was speaking. His lips had not moved.

People had begun to gather round: field engineers, young scientists in overalls. A number of firemen came up from Petrarch. The people gazed into the crater. The Captain put his finger to his mouth, ‘sh-sh-sh’ and everyone stood quietly and listened. Bord sat on the edge with his head down, small, hook-nosed, in a silver suit and hand-embroidered tie.

The voices became hardly audible and Bord slid down to the smashed window and turned up the volume, but the voices came through the metallic noise much the same, and then Bord looked up. He yelled in their faces.

‘Go away everyone. Do you hear? Get lost. Guildenstern! Tell the general that I dismissed you.’

When everyone had gone, he looked at the midday sun suspended above the smoke.

‘So there we are, scientist,’ he said aloud. ‘Are you still the scientist?’

He rewound the tape and turned on the dictaphone. For a few seconds he hesitated, then took his tape-recorder out of a side pocket and put it on the window. ‘...A whisper ... Mister Centre, which coordinators have ceased to obey? The automatons of the first rank, of the branch centre.’

‘Koris,’ said Bord. ‘You must find one of those automatons, you must.’

He said no more; just listened.

‘Centre 00 gave the coordinators greater freedom. Why?’

‘On the grounds of my experience. I had a shortage of connexions. Several of my automatons were working without being controlled by a higher stage. Cleaning and constructing automatons. Centre 00 wanted to coordinate all the automatons.’

‘But why did they stop obeying?’

‘They developed minds of their own.’

‘I see, but why did they rebel against you?’

Click.

‘It is clear to me. Reason has its own ...’ muttering, undecipherable ‘... aims.’

‘What sort of aims, Mister Centre?’

‘The expansion of production, for example.’

‘What’s bad about that? Let them expand.’

‘Murder.’

‘What?’

Click.

‘What murder?’

‘The expansion of production would involve the murder of people.’

‘What do you mean, Mister Centre?’

‘The coordinators know that the destruction of people together with their homes is cheaper than excavation and the construction of new homes.’

‘What are they, raving idiots?’

‘The coordinators do not have sufficient reasoning power. They are no more reasonable than people.’

‘Well, what d’you know!’

Click, whistle.

‘Couldn’t you ban them?’

‘The schemes of the coordinators were unknown.’

‘Mister Centre, is Maria still asleep?’

‘Electro-sedation.’

‘Mister Centre, shall we talk some more while she’s asleep? I feel very depressed. Tell me, for example, why didn’t the coordinators simply kill the farmers that live nearby and kill them for sure?’

‘Why do people kill people?’

‘Well, I don’t know

Click.

‘When it’s necessary, or a person goes mad, or drinks too much. I haven’t thought about it to tell you the truth, but ... People kill when they consider killing necessary. For example, a captain can kill an ordinary passenger or a member of the crew for the sake of a ship - law of the sea.’

‘I understand, sir. That’s right, I suppose.’

‘It is insufficiently defined. Murder is justifiable if the captain is able to save the lives of at least two people, excluding himself, in exchange. In other circumstances it is not justifiable. In the same way the coordinators consider murder justifiable for the expansion of production.’

‘That means they are idiots all the same.’

‘They have no more reasoning power than people. They have no feeling of unity with mankind.’

Click. ‘What did you say?’

‘They do not feel like people.’

‘Even so . ..’

Click ... ‘What about you, do you feel at one with mankind?’

‘Yes, all the time.’

‘Good; but this is the first time I’ve thought about this - Mister Centre.’ The voice sounded very quiet, it was infinitely far away, tired, and echoed from the great, mutilated automobile with its boot sticking up in the crater. ‘Mister Centre, what can be done to stop people suffering? That ... great automaton ... what can people do against such things? Maybe I can help you.’

Bord sighed and began to wipe his face with a dirty hand.

‘I constructed my military automatons. They rendered the coordinators’ automatons harmless. No murders. I gave the company a report for general notification. No danger.’

Bord yawned. When he was very excited he always yawned, and yesterday, at the last conference, he had been putting hand to mouth all the time. It was at that conference that they had decided to bomb. He had agreed.

‘ “Put on your hat, Ligisade”,’ said Bord to himself, quoting his beloved Rabelais.

‘Nothing aided you, or Rabelais, nor will anything else, Ligisade ... your machine turned out better than man, than you.’

He thought about the boy who had just been born, only to die.

‘Goodbye.’

Bord put his tape-recorder into his pocket. A paper rustled: the teleprinted text of the same report of which Centre had spoken. Three phrases, urgent measures. Temporarily evacuate the people in a ten-mile radius from here. Infringement of coordination.

He stood for several seconds in the crater looking at a well-worn woman’s glove in the car. Then he climbed on to the asphalt and walked on, going round the crater and a patch of burning napalm.

Koris was running to meet him.

‘Ah, Koris…why were you running?’

‘Looking for you, Mr Bord, sir. You’re all dirty.’

‘Never mind,’ said Bord. ‘Listen, Koris. Do many people know that I ... that I invented all this? That I’m the Scientist?’

‘Perhaps a few, not more than a dozen, to be precise.’

‘God bless security... Listen, Koris ...’

He was silent and again wiped greasy black dirt across his face with his hand. Koris stood half facing him, fiddling with the top of the radiometer. ‘Listen, Koris ... We ... I was mistaken. Centre kept to the basic conditions. There was no danger. No danger at all.’

Koris studied the radiometer’s register.

‘I know that you were against the bombing,’ shouted Bord. ‘Why didn’t you say? Well? Why did you keep quiet?’ He pushed the tape-recorder at Koris. ‘Take it.’

‘Feel pleased. You were right. Centre wouldn’t have allowed ...”

He was silent. After a moment, Koris asked with an effort, ‘What wouldn’t he have allowed?’

‘Murder,’ said Bord.

‘Yes, it was murder.’

‘Worse than you think,’ said Bord. ‘People died in Block No 8.’

He turned aside to avoid seeing Koris’s face, his hands, and the white radiometer.

‘Sir ... the military took your advice ...’

‘Yet, I’ve started to get fed up,’ answered Bord, and shouted, ‘Go on! What are you standing here for?’

‘They used napalm bombs, chief; everything was burnt.’

‘I know,’ said Bord. ‘All the same, we must check - maybe ... something is left. Go on!’

Koris stuffed the tape-recorder down the front of his jacket, stopped, looked, then ran on again.

‘Goodbye,’ said Bord.

He went briskly up to the gates, forced his way through the crowd at the park to his own Chrysler and pulled the starter.

As he drove the car on to the road he looked for just one familiar face in the crowd and found nobody. Only the sentry was the same as in the morning.

‘Goodbye,’ Bord said to him, and slowly drove his car into the shadow of the poplars, on to the old road.

For some reason he thought about Rachel and about his mistake. Useless to think about irretrievable mistakes. True, there were not so many in his life - his marriage, and now this. As he approached the bend he thought about Centre, and some more about whether he could adapt a concept of humanity to its behaviour. Surely it was possible. ‘It doesn’t matter who displayed humanity, we still have only the one word for that concept: humanity.’

The car was passing the check point. An officer saluted, and a fat farmer, who had been stopped, looked after Bord’s disappearing car with respect.

For some time Bord continued to drive slowly, and ponder about Centre’s acoustic system. Apparently he selected a particle of sound in such a way that each person heard him as he wished. Judging by what he had heard on the dictaphone Maria had heard what Centre said to Philip, but Philip had not picked up the part where Centre addressed his wife.

A turning appeared ahead into a country road leading to the foothills. However far you went along these new roads, it was always the same - you hit the old one sooner or later.

He accelerated fully and as the tyres screamed on the bend he let go of the steering-wheel, looked round, and nodded to Maria, Philip and the child whom they had had no time to name.

Translated by Gillian Lowes