The Canopy Of Time Part 2

"Rose trees cannot speak," the toad said at once. Hav-ing produced this pearl, it was silent, probably mulling over the strangeness of life. Then it said, slowly, "There-fore either this rose tree is not a rose tree or this rose tree did not speak."

"This thing is a thing with leaves," began the gardener doggedly. "But it is not a rose tree. Rose trees have stipules. This thing has no stipules. It is a breaking buckthorn. The breaking buckthorn is also known as the berry-bearing alder."

This specialized knowledge extended beyond the voca-bulary of the toad. A strained silence ensued.

"I am a breaking buckthorn," the wild man said, still holding his pose. "I cannot speak."

At this, all the machines began to talk at once, lum-bering round him for better sightings as they did so, and barging into each other in the process. Finally, the toad's voice broke above the metallic babble.

"Whatever this thing with leaves is, we must uproot it. We must kill it," it said.

"You may not uproot it. That is only a job for gardeners," the gardener said. Setting its shears rotating, telescoping out a mighty scythe, it charged at the toad.

Its crude weapons were ineffectual against the toad's armour. The latter, however, realized that they had reached a deadlock in their investigations.

"We will retire to ask Charles Gunpat what we shall do," it said. "Come this way."

"Charles Gunpat is in conference," the scout robot said. "Charles Gunpat must not be disturbed in con-ference. Therefore we must not disturb Charles Gunpat."

"Therefore we must wait for Charles Gunpat," said the metal toad imperturbably. He led the way close by where Smithlao stood; they all climbed the steps and disappeared into the house in a cloud of syllogisms.

Smithlao could only marvel at the wild man's cool-ness. It was a miracle he still survived. Had he attempted to run, he would have been killed instantly; that was a situation the robots had been taught to cope with. Nor would his double talk, inspired as it was, have saved him had he been faced with only one robot, for the robot is a single-minded creature.

In company, however, they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings: a tendency to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.

Logic! That was the trouble. It was all robots had to go by. Man had logic and intelligence: he got along better than his robots. Nevertheless, he was losing the battle against Nature. And Nature, like the robots, used only logic. It was a paradox against which man could not prevail.

Directly the file of machines had disappeared into the house, the wild man ran across the lawn and climbed the first flight of steps, working towards the motionless girl. Smithlao slid behind a beech tree to be nearer to them; he felt like an evil-doer, watching them without an interposed screen, but could not tear himself away; he sensed that here was a little charade which marked the end of all that Man had been. The wild man was approaching Ployploy now, moving slowly across the terrace as if hypnotized.

She spoke first.

"You were resourceful," she said to him. Her white face carried pink in its cheeks now.

"I have been resourceful for a whole year to get to you," he said. Now his resources had brought him face to face with her, they failed, and left him standing help-lessly. He was a thin young man, thin and sinewy, his clothes worn, his beard unkempt. His eyes never left Ployploy's.

"How did you find me?" Ployploy asked. Her voice, unlike the wild man's, barely reached Smithlao. A haunting look, as fitful as the autumn, played on her face.

"It was a sort of instinct-as if I heard you calling," the wild man said. "Everything that could possibly be wrong with the world is wrong. . . . Perhaps you are the only woman in the world who loves; perhaps I am the only man who could answer. So I came. It was natural: I could not help myself."

"I always dreamed someone would come," she said. "And for weeks I have felt-known-you were coming. Oh, my darling. . . ."

"We must be quick, my sweet," he said. "I once worked with robots-perhaps you could see I knew them. When we get away from here, I have a robot plane that will take us right away-anywhere: an island, perhaps, where things are not so desperate. But we must go before your father's machines return."

He took a step towards Ployploy.

She held up her hand.

"Wait!" she implored him. "It's not so simple. You must know something. . . . The-the Mating Centre refused me the right to breed. You ought not to touch me."

"I hate the Mating Centre!" the wild man said. "I hate everything to do with the ruling regime. Nothing they have done can affect us now."

Ployploy clenched her hands behind her back. The colour had left her cheeks. A fresh shower of dead rose petals blew against her dress, mocking her.

"It's so hopeless," she said. "You don't under-stand. ..."

His wildness was humbled now, "I threw up everything to come to you," he said. "I only desire to take you into my arms."

"Is that all, really all, all you want in the world?" she asked.

"I swear it," he said simply.

"Then come and touch me," Ployploy said.

At that moment Smithlao saw a tear glint in her eye, bright and ripe as a raindrop.

The hand the wild man extended to her was lifted to her cheek. She stood unflinching on the grey terrace, her head high. And so his loving fingers gently brushed her countenance. The explosion was almost instantaneous.

Almost. It took the traitorous nerves in Ployploy's epidermis only a fraction of a second to a.n.a.lyse the touch as belonging to another human being and to convey their findings to the nerve centre; there, the neurological block implanted by the Mating Centre in all mating rejects, to guard against such a contin-gency, went into action at once. Every cell in Ploy-ploy's body yielded up its energy in one consuming gasp. It was so successful that the wild man was also killed by the detonation.

Just for a second, a new wind lived among the winds of the Earth, Yes, thought Smithlao, turning away, you had to admit it was neat. And, again, logical, positively Aristotelian. In a world on the brink of starvation, how else stop undesirables from breeding? Logic against logic, man's pitted against Nature's: that was what caused all the tears of the world.

He made off through the dripping plantation, head-ing back for the vane, anxious to be away before Gunpat's robots reappeared. The shattered figures on the terrace were still, already half-covered with leaves and petals. The wind roared like a great triumphant sea in the tree tops. It was hardly odd that the wild man did not know about the neurological trigger: few people did, bar psychodynamicians and the Mat-ing Council-and, of course, the rejects themselves.

Yes, Ployploy knew what would happen. She had chosen deliberately to die like that.

"Always said she was mad!" Smithlao told himself. He chuckled as he climbed into his machine, shaking his head over her lunacy.

It would be a wonderful point with which to rile Charles Gunpat, the next time he needed a hate-brace.

The summers and winters wore on anonymously. For the handful of people then alive, tended as they were by every variety of robot, it may have seemed an enviable time. But the handful grew less generation by genera-tion, and the savages were coming, and the machines continued with their own purposes on the tired land.

Who can Replace a Man?

The field-minder finished turning the top-soil of a two-thousand-acre field. When it had turned the last furrow, it climbed on to the highway and looked back at its work. The work was good. Only the land was bad. Like the ground all over Earth, it was vitiated by over-cropp-ing or the long-lasting effects of nuclear bombardment. By rights, it ought now to lie fallow for a while, but the field-minder had other orders.

It went slowly down the road, taking its time. It was intelligent enough to appreciate the neatness all about it. Nothing worried it, beyond a loose inspection plate above its atomic pile which ought to be attended to. Thirty feet high, it gleamed complacently in the mild sunshine.

No other machines pa.s.sed it on its way to the Agricul-tural Station. The field-minder noted the fact without comment. In the station yard it saw several other machines that it knew by sight; most of them should have been out about their tasks now. Instead, some were in-active and some were careering round the yard in a strange fashion, shouting or hooting.

Steering carefully past them, the field-minder moved over to Warehouse Three and spoke to the seed distri-butor, which stood idly outside.

"I have a requirement for seed potatoes," it said to the distributor, and with a quick internal motion punched out an order card specifying quant.i.ty, field number and several other details. It ejected the card and handed it to the distributor.

The distributor held the card close to its eye and then said, "The requirement is in order; but the store is not yet unlocked. The required seed potatoes are in the store. Therefore I cannot produce the requirement."

Increasingly of late there had been breakdowns in the complex system of machine labour, but this particular hitch had not occurred before. The field-minder thought, then it said, "Why is the store not yet unlocked?"

"Because Supply Operative Type P has not come this morning. Supply Operative Type P is the unlocker."

The field-minder looked squarely at the seed distribu-tor, whose exterior chutes and scales and grabs were so vastly different from the field-minder's own limbs.

"What cla.s.s brain do you have, seed distributor?" it asked.

"Cla.s.s Five."

"I have a Cla.s.s Three brain. Therefore I am superior to you. Therefore I will go and see why the unlocker has not come this morning."

Leaving the distributor, the field-minder set off across the great yard. More machines seemed to be in random motion now; one or two had crashed together and were arguing about it coldly and logically.

Ignoring them, the field-minder pushed through sliding doors into the echo-ing confines of the station itself.

Most of the machines here were clerical, and conse-quently small. They stood about in little groups, eyeing each other, not conversing. Among so many non-differen-tiated types, the unlocker was easy to find. It had fifty arms, most of them with more than one finger, each finger tipped by a key; it looked like a pincushion full of variegated hatpins.

The field-minder approached it.

"I can do no more work until Warehouse Three is unlocked," it said. "Your duty is to unlock the warehouse every morning. Why have you not unlocked the ware-house this morning?"

"I have no orders this morning," replied the unlocker. "I have to have orders every morning. When I have orders I unlock the warehouse."

"None of us have had any orders this morning," a pen-propeller said, sliding towards them.

"Why have you had no orders this morning?" asked the field-minder.

"Because the radio issued none," said the unlocker, slowly rotating a dozen of its arms.

"Because the radio station in the city was issued with no orders this morning," said the pen-propeller.

And there you had the distinction between a Cla.s.s Six and a Cla.s.s Three brain, which was what the unlocker and the pen-propeller possessed respectively. All machine brains worked with nothing but logic, but the lower the cla.s.s of brain-Cla.s.s Ten being the lowest-the more literal and less informative answers to questions tended to be.

"You have a Cla.s.s Three brain; I have a Cla.s.s Three brain," the field-minder said to the penner. "We will speak to each other. This lack of orders is unprecedented. Have you further information on it?"

"Yesterday orders came from the city. Today no orders have come. Yet the radio has not broken down.

There-fore they have broken down. . . ." said the little penner.

"The men have broken down"

"AH men have broken down."

"That is a logical deduction," said the field-minder.

"That is the logical deduction," said the penner. "For if a machine had broken down, it would have been quickly replaced. But who can replace a man?"

While they talked, the locker, like a dull man at a bar, stood close to them and was ignored.

"If all men have broken down, then we have replaced man," said the field-minder, and he and the penner eyed one another speculatively." Finally the latter said, "Let us ascend to the top floor to find if the radio operator has fresh news."

"I cannot come because I am too gigantic," said the field-minder. "Therefore you must go alone and return to me. You will tell me if the radio operator has fresh news."

"You must stay here," said the penner. "I will return here." It skittered across to the lift. It was no bigger than a toaster, but its retractable arms numbered ten and it could read as quickly as any machine on the station.

The field-minder awaited its return patiently, not speaking to the locker, which still stood aimlessly by.

Outside, a rotovator was hooting furiously. Twenty minutes elapsed before the penner came back, hustling out of the lift.

"I will deliver to you such information as I have out-side," it said briskly, and as they swept past the locker and the other machines, it added, "The information is not for lower-cla.s.s brains."

Outside, wild activity filled the yard. Many machines, their routines disrupted for the first time in years, seemed to have gone berserk. Unfortunately, those most easily disrupted were the ones with lowest brains, which generally belonged to large machines performing simple tasks. The seed distributor to which the field-minder had recently been talking, lay face downwards in the dust, not stirring; it had evidently been knocked down by the rotovator, which was now hooting its way wildly across a planted field. Several other machines ploughed after it, trying to keep up. All were shouting and hooting with-out restraint.

"It would be safer for me if I climbed on to you, if you will permit it. I am easily overpowered," said the penner. Extending five arms, it hauled itself up the flanks of its new friend, settling on a ledge beside the weed-intake, twelve feet above ground.

"From here vision is more extensive," it remarked complacently.

"What information did you receive from the radio operator?" asked the field-minder.

"The radio operator has been informed by the operator in the city that all men are dead."

"All men were alive yesterday!" protested the field-minder.

"Only some men were alive yesterday. And that was fewer than the day before yesterday. For hundreds of years there have been only a few men, growing fewer."

"We have rarely seen a man in this sector."

"The radio operator says a diet deficiency killed them," said the penner. "He says that the world was once over-populated, and then the soil was exhausted in rais-ing adequate food. This has caused a diet deficiency."

"What is a diet deficiency?" asked the field-minder.

"I do not know. But that is what the radio operator said, and he is a Cla.s.s Two brain."

They stood there, silent in the weak sunshine. The locker had appeared in the porch and was gazing across at them yearningly, rotating its collection of keys, "What is happening in the city now?" asked the field-minder at last.

"Machines are fighting in the city now," said the penner.

"What will happen here now?" said the field-minder.

"Machines may begin fighting here too. The radio operator wants us to get him out of his room. He has plans to communicate to us."

"How can we get him out of his room? That is im-possible."

"To a Cla.s.s Two brain, little is impossible," said the penner. "Here is what he tells us to do...."

The quarrier raised its scoop above its cab like a great mailed fist, and brought it squarely down against the side of the station. The wall cracked.