The Asses of Balaam, Randall Garrett [i love reading books txt] 📗

As he handed the powerful glasses over to the Keeper, who had followed him up the hill, Dodeth said: "I'm glad you can see them. I thought maybe my brain had been short-circuited."

"I can see them," said the Eldest Keeper, peering through the glasses. Then he handed them back to Dodeth. "Let's get back down to the car. I want to find out what's going on around here."

At the car, the Eldest Keeper just scowled for a moment, looking very worried. By this time, the other two cars had pulled up nearby, discharging their cargo of two more Keepers apiece. While the Eldest Keeper talked in low tones with his colleagues, Dodeth stalked over to one of the pesticide robots who was prowling nearby.

"Found anything useful?" he asked sarcastically, knowing that sarcasm was useless on a robot.

"I'm not looking for anything useful, sir. I'm looking for the animals we are supposed to destroy."

"You come over and tell the Eldest Keeper that," Dodeth said.

"Yes, sir," the robot agreed promptly, rolling along beside Dodeth as he returned to where the Keepers were waiting.

"What's going on here?" the Eldest demanded curtly of the robot. "Why haven't you destroyed the animals?"

"Because we can't find them, sir."

"What's your name?" the Eldest snapped.

"Arike, sir."

"All right, Arike," said the Eldest somewhat angrily. "Stand by for orders. You'll repeat them to the other robots, understand?"

"Yes, sir," said the robot.

"All right, then," said the Eldest. "First, you take a run up that hill and look into that clearing. You'll see those creatures in there all right."

"Yes, sir. I've seen those creatures in there."

The Eldest Keeper exploded. "Then get in there and obey your orders! Don't you realize that their very existence threatens the life of all of us? They must be eliminated before our whole culture is destroyed! Do you understand? Obey!"

"Yes, sir," said the robot. His voice sounded odd, but he spun around and went to pass the word on to the other robots. Within minutes, more and more of the pesticide robots were swarming towards and into the clearing. They could hear rumbling noises from the clearing—low grunts that were evidently made by animals who were trapped by the encircling robots.

And then there was a vast silence.

Dodeth and the Keepers waited.

Not a shot was fired.

It was as though a great, sound-proof blanket had been flung over the whole area.

"What in the Unknown Name of the Universal Motivator is going on around here?" said Dodeth in a hushed tone. He wondered how many times he had asked himself that.

"We may as well take a look," said the Eldest Keeper.

Two hundred pesticide robots were ranged around the perimeter of the clearing, their weapons facing inward. Not a one of them moved.

Inside the circle of machines, the twenty wygorex stood motionless, watching the ring of robots. Now and then, one of them gave a deep, coughing rumble, but otherwise they made no noise.

Dodeth Pell could stand it no longer. "Robots!" He shouted as loudly as he could, his voice shrill with urgency. "I order you to fire!"

It was as though he hadn't said a word. Both robots and wygorex ignored him completely.

Dodeth turned and yelled to one one of the patrol robots that was standing nearby. "You! What's your name?"

"Arvam, sir."

"Arvam, can you tell what it is those things have done to the robots?"

"They haven't done anything, sir."

"Then why don't the robots fire as they've been told?" Dodeth didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but he was badly frightened. He had never heard of a robot behaving this way before.

"They can't, sir."

"They can't? Don't they realize that if those things aren't killed, we may all die?"

"I didn't know that," said the patrol robot. "If we do not kill them, then you may be killed, and you have ordered us to kill them, but if we obey your orders, then we will kill them, and that will mean that you won't be killed, but they will, so we can't do that, but if we don't then you will be killed, and we must obey, and that means we must, but we can't, but if we don't we will, and we can't so we must but we can't but if we don't you will so we must but we can't but we—" He kept repeating it over and over again, on and on and on.

"Stop that!" snapped Dodeth.

But the robot didn't even seem to hear.

Dodeth was really frightened now. He looked back at the five keepers and scuttled toward them.

"What's wrong with the robots?" he asked shrilly. "They've never failed us before!"

The Elder Keeper looked at him. "What makes you think they've failed us now?" he asked softly.

Dodeth gaped speechlessly. The Eldest didn't seem to be making any more sense than the patrol robot had.

"No," the Keeper went on, "they haven't failed us. They have served us well. They have pointed out to us something which we have failed to see, and, in doing so, have saved us from making a catastrophic error."

"I don't understand," said Dodeth.

"I'll explain," the Elder Keeper said, "but first go over to that patrol robot and tell him quietly that the situation has changed. Tell him that we are no longer in any danger from the wygorex. Then bring him over here."

Dodeth did as he was told, without understanding at all.

"I still don't understand, sir," he said bewilderedly.

"Dodeth, what would happen if I told Arvam, here, to fire on you?"

"Why ... why, he'd refuse."

"Why should he?"

"Because I'm human! That's the most basic robot command."

"I don't know," the Eldest said, eying Dodeth shrewdly. "You might not be a human. You might be a snith. You look like a snith."

Dodeth swallowed the insult, wondering what the Eldest meant.

"Arvam," the Eldest Keeper said to the robot, "doesn't he look like a snith to you?"

"Yes, sir," Arvam agreed.

Dodeth swallowed that one, too.

"Then how do you know he isn't a snith, Arvam?"

"Because he behaves like a human, sir. A snith does not behave like a human."

"And if something does behave like a human, what then?"

"Anything that behaves like a human is human, sir."

Dodeth suddenly felt as though his eyes had suddenly focused after being unfocused for a long time. He gestured toward the clearing. "You mean those ... those things ... are ... human?"

"Yes sir," said Arvam solidly.

"But they don't even talk!"

"Pardon me for correcting you sir, but they do. I cannot understand their speech, but the pattern is clearly recognizable as speech. Most of their conversation is carried on in tones of subsonic frequency, so your ears cannot hear it. Apparently, your voices are supersonic to them."

"Well, I'll be fried," said Dodeth. He looked at the Elder Keeper. "That's why the robots reported they couldn't find any animal of that description in the vicinity."

"Certainly. There weren't any."

"And we were so fooled by their monstrous appearance that we didn't pay any attention to their actions," said Dodeth.

"Exactly."

"But this makes the puzzle even worse," said Dodeth. "How could such a creature evolve?"

"Look!" interrupted one of the other Keepers, pointing. "Up there in the sky!"

All eyes turned toward the direction the finger pointed.

It was a silvery speck in the sky that moved and became larger.

"I don't think they're from our World at all," said the Eldest Keeper. He turned to the patrol robot. "Arvam, go down and tell the pesticide robots that there is no danger to us. They're still confused, and I have a feeling that the humans in that ship up there might not like it if we are caught pointing guns at their friends."

As Arvam rolled off, Dodeth said "Another World?"

"Why not?" asked the Eldest. "The Moon, after all, is another World, smaller than ours, to be sure, and airless, but still another World. We haven't thought too much about other Worlds because we have our own World to take care of. But there was a time, back in the days of the builders of the surface cities, when our people dreamed such things. But our Moon was the only one close enough, and there was no point in going to a place which is even more hellish than our Brightside.

"But suppose the Yellow Sun also has a planet—or maybe even one of the more distant suns, which are hardly more than glimmers of light. They came, and they landed a few of their party to make a small clearing. Then the ship went somewhere else—to the dark side of our Moon, maybe, I don't know. But they were within calling range, for the ship was called as soon as trouble appeared.

"We don't know anything about them yet, but we will. And we've got to show them that we, too, are human. We have a job ahead of us—a job of communication.

"But we also have a great future if we handle things right."

Dodeth watched the ship, now grown to a silvery globe of tremendous size, drift slowly downward toward the clearing. He felt an inward glow of intense anticipation, and he fidgeted impatiently as he waited to see what would happen next.

He rippled a stomp.