Necromancer

Chapter 17

"Set!" said Paul.

The word went out and was lost in the shadowy stillness above and behind the metallic shapes of the huge units standing over and around Paul. There was a slight noise behind him. He glanced toward it and saw a corridor opening once more in the general direction from which he had reached this area on the forty-ninth level. In the opposite direction a single unit slid out to fill most of the open space, and turned toward Paul. It rolled slowly toward him. He backed up and saw he was being forced into the newly opened corridor.

"So you can do violence to people," said Paul.

"No," said the voice that had spoken to Tyne. Now it seemed to come from the unit that was crowding Paul backward.

"You're doing violence to me right now."

"I am correcting a misplacement," said the voice. "Your value is external and false. It is perverting the symbological matrix of society at this moment."

"Nonetheless," said Paul, "you have a responsibility to me, as well as to society."

"More latitude," said the unit, forcing him back along the corridor, "is possible with those not sane, who are not responsible."

"I'm not sane?"

"No," said the machine, "you are not."

"I'd like," said Paul, "to hear your definition of sanity."

"Sanity," replied the voice, "in the human being is a response to natural instincts. It is sane to sleep, to eat, to seek to feed oneself, to fight if attacked, to sleep if no occupation is at hand."

Paul's shoulder blades came up against something hard. Turning around, he saw he had reached a turn in the corridor down which he was backing. The unit rolling toward him on invisible smooth-turning cylinders had not paused. He changed direction and backed away again.

"How about thinking? Is that sane?"

"Thought is a perfectly sane process, as long as it follows sane paths in the human brain."

"Such as those concerned with feeding and sleeping?"

"Yes."

"But not," said Paul, "those concerned with painting a picture or discovering a new method of interstellar travel?"

"Such thinking," said the unit, "is a response to abnormal irritations in the environment of the human concerned. Perfectly sane human beings have no need to do more than live and propagate, all under the conditions of greatest comfort."

"By those standards," said Paul, still backing up, "most of the human race is insane."

"You are quite wrong," said the voice, "roughly eighty-five per cent of the human race has had no real desire outside the framework I mentioned. Of the remaining fifteen, only about five in any generation have made any real effort to put their insanities into practice. Perhaps two per cent have some effect on future generations and one-tenth of one per cent are later admired even by the sane."

"I won't argue your figures," said Paul, feeling his left shoulder brush a unit, unyielding as the brick wall against which a man stands before a firing squad. "Even though I could. But don't you think the fact that your final category is admired even by the sane, as you put it, is some kind of an indication that maybe others had something besides insanity at work for them?"

"No," said the voice.

"Forgive me," said Paul. "I think I overestimated you. Let me say that again in terms you might be able to handle. Once you achieve an ideal existence for the human race, what's going to become of the arts, scientific research of all kinds, and the exploration of the natural universe?"

"They will be abandoned by the sane," said the machine.

Paul, backing up, saw the flanking units on either side of his corridor suddenly give way to open space. At the same time, the unit which had been herding him forward rolled level with the mouth of the corridor and stopped, so that Paul now found himself facing a final wall. He turned and looked about him. He stood, completely hemmed in by a wall of units, upon the contact area at the end of the three-step accelerator. The end of the tube, the terminal that could tear him from this spot off into the universal ubiquity of no-time, loomed high above his head like a cannon mouth over the head of a sparrow which, in its muzzle, had taken refuge from a hawk.

"And the insane, at that time?" asked Paul.

"There will be no more insane," said the Voice. "They will have destroyed themselves."

Paul saw nothing to give him any impression, and heard nothing; but deep within his flesh and bones he felt the accelerator warming to life. Even now, back and forth over flashing yards of distance, the point of no-time to be, was wanning to life. Paul thought of Springboard, and of the emptiness of space.

"You tried to get me to destroy myself, didn't you?" said Paul, remembering what Jase had said. "In the mine; in front of the marching society that day."

"Always," said the voice, "the way has been open for you to destroy yourself. It is what works best with the insane. The sane are easy to kill. The insane fight very bard against being killed, but are more susceptible where it comes to the opportunities of self-destruction."

"Do you realize," asked Paul, feeling the accelerator warming to life over him, "your definition of sane and insane is completely artificial and wrong?"

"No," said the machine, "I cannot be anything but correct It is impossible for me to be incorrect."

"You ought to see," said Paul, "that one false assumption used as a basis for later decisions could cause all your conclusions to be in error."

"I know this. I also know I contain no false assumptions," answered the voice. Above the looming curve of the accelerator the dusk of the dark higher up seemed to be pressing down on Paul. Almost, the voice seemed to descend also, becoming confidential. "My assumptions must stand the test of whether the structures built upon them guarantee a safe and continued life to mankind. This they do. I am humanity's guardian. You, in contrast, are its destroyer."

"I...?" asked Paul, staring up into the darkness.

"I know you. You are the destroyer of mankind. You are the warrior who will not fight and cannot be conquered. You are proud," said the machine. "I know you, Necromancer. Already you have done incalculable damage, and created the first blind living form of the inconceivable enemy."

A barrier went down in Paul's mind. What was beyond it, he could not at this moment see; but it brought him relief and strength. It was as if a soldier, after long waiting, had at last received definite orders commanding him upon a long and desperate journey.

"I see," said Paul quietly, as much to himself as to the machine.

"To see is not enough," said the voice. "It is not enough excuse. I am the living wish of mankind expressed in solidity. I have the right to direct people. You have not. They are not yours. They are mine." The tones of the voice did not vary, but Paul got an impression of total effort being directed against him. "I will not let you lead mankind blindfold through a dark maze to an end they cannot conceive of, and final destruction. I cannot destroy you, or I would. But I can put you aside."

The voice paused slightly.

Paul was suddenly aware of a slight humming from the great cylinder head beside and above him. The acceleration was nearing the point of break into no-time which, like a sudden spark jumping, would contact and remove him from the point where he stood. He had just time to remember that he had been through no-time before, on the heels of Jase and Kantele when they escaped the police in the office across the concourse from the Koh-i-Nor. But that had been like running down a flight of stairs, while this would be like being thrown down them. He had just time to brace his awareness.

"Now," said the machine.

And Paul was ripped from the position he held in time and space and spread out to the uttermost reaches of the universe.