Special Deliverance

11

After breakfast they went across the road to the cube. The grass was still wet with dew. Jurgens had aroused them at the first light of dawn, with the oatmeal and coffee cooking.

In the slanting morning light the cube was not as blue as it had been when seen in the full light of day. It had an opallike appearance, delicate and fragile.

“Now it looks like porcelain,” said Sandra. “It looked, at times, like porcelain when we first saw it, but now it can’t be mistaken. It must be porcelain.”

The Parson picked up a fist-size rock and hurled it against the cube. The rock bounced back. “It’s not porcelain,” the Parson said. “That’s a hell of a way to find out,” said Lansing. “The cube may remember who it was who threw the rock.” “You talk as if it may be alive,” said Mary. “I wouldn’t bet it isn’t.”

“We’re wasting time standing here and talking,” said the Parson. “I’m against it, for I still think this thing is evil, but if the rest of you are set on investigating, let’s investigate. The sooner we get done with it, the sooner we can get on to something else.”

“That’s right,” said the Brigadier. “Let’s go back to the grove and cut some poles. We can use them to probe the area before we move into it.”

Lansing did not go with the Brigadier and Parson. He trailed along behind Jurgens, who was trying out his crutch. The robot was making awkward work of it, but after a time, Lansing told himself, he’d begin to catch the hang of it. Twice he fell and Lansing helped him up each time.

“Leave me alone,” Jurgens finally told him. “You upset me, hovering over me, ready with a helping hand. I appreciate your concern but I have to work this out myself, in my own way. If I fall, I’ll manage to get up.”

“Okay, pal,” said Lansing. “More than likely you are right.”

Leaving Jurgens, he began a slow circuit of the cube, staying just outside the circle of sand. He studied the walls with care, hoping that somewhere on their surface he would see some seam, some discontinuity that might be significant. He saw nothing. The walls rose smooth and without any kind of break. The material of which they were constructed appeared to be a solid piece.

Occasionally he sneaked a look at Jurgens. The robot was not doing well, but he was sticking to the job. Once he fell, used the crutch to pull himself erect and then went on. None of the others was in sight. The Brigadier and the Parson were at the campsite, cutting poles; at times Lansing heard the sound of chopping. Mary and Sandra probably were on the other side of the cube.

He stood, looking at it, questions racing in his mind. Could it be a living space, a house in which dwelled an unknown family of beings? Could they be inside now, going about their affairs, at times some of them looking out of windows (windows?) at the strange, befuddled bipedal creatures who had stumbled on their home? Or was it, perhaps, a repository of knowledge, a library, a treasury of fact and thought wholly alien to the human mind, although not necessarily alien in itself, but the fact and thought of another branch of the human race many millennia beyond the world that he had known? Which was quite possible, he thought. The night before he and Jurgens had talked of that, of the disparity of time that might be possible in alternate worlds. It was quite apparent from what Jurgens had told him that the robot’s time had been many thousands of years in the future beyond the time of Lansing’s Earth. Or could the cube be a structure out of time itself, seen only dimly through the misty veil of otherwhen and otherwhere? That didn’t seem to make much sense, for the cube was not difficult to see. It was as sound as anyone might wish.

He continued in his slow walk around the cube. Now that the sun was up, the day was fine. The dew had disappeared and the sky was high and blue, with no fleck of cloud to mar its depth. Plodding toward the road came the Brigadier and Parson, each of them carrying a long, trimmed pole cut from a sapling. They crossed the road and came up to him.

“You walked around it?” asked the Brigadier. “All the way around it?”

“I did,” Lansing told him, “and it’s the same as here. There is nothing. Not a thing at all.”

“Get up close to it,” said the Parson, “and one might see something that you’d miss standing out here. A close look is always better than the long look.”

Lansing agreed with him. “That is right,” he said.

“Why don’t you go and cut a pole?” asked the Brigadier. “With the three of us, the investigation would go faster.”

“I don’t think I will,” said Lansing. “I think it’s a waste of time.”

Both of them looked at him for a moment and then they turned away. The Brigadier said to the Parson, “Let’s work it this way. Let’s start about twelve feet apart and cover the ground outside ourselves and the ground between ourselves, overlapping. Probing with poles so that if there’s something there, it will attack the poles instead of us.”

The Parson nodded knowingly. “That is what I had in mind.”

So they started out, the Brigadier saying, “We’ll work in to the wall and when we get in next to the wall, we’ll separate, you going to the left, I to the right. We’ll work carefully around the wall until we meet.”

The Parson did not answer and they went along, working slowly toward the wall, each one probing with his pole.

And what, Lansing wondered, if the thing, or things, that were in the sand circle were programmed or trained to snap at a living being that had invaded its domain, but at nothing else? But he said nothing and sauntered down the road, looking for Mary and Sandra. A short distance down the road he glimpsed them, coming around the cube, keeping well outside the sand circle that surrounded it.

A yelp behind him jerked him around. The Brigadier was running at full gallop through the sand circle toward the road. The pole the Brigadier carried was only half a pole. It had been sheared off cleanly in the middle and the other half of it lay on the sand against the wall. The Parson was standing stark, as if petrified, against the wall, swiveling his head around to look over his shoulder at the fleeing Brigadier. To the right of the Brigadier something flickered from the sand, so swift that there was no chance of seeing what it was, and the other half of the half pole the Brigadier was carrying flew into the air, neatly bitten off. The Brigadier bawled in terror and flung away the remainder of the pole. In a running broad jump, he cleared the last few feet of sand and piled up on the grassy surface between the sand circle and the road.

Mary and Sandra were running now to reach the fallen Brigadier while the petrified Parson still stood stiff against the wall.

The Brigadier scrambled to his feet and dusted off his tunic. Then, as if unconscious that anything had happened, he assumed the military starkness, the stiff-as-a-ramrod posture softened by a regal nonchalance that was his ordinary pose.

“My dears,” he said to the two women as they pulled up in front of him, “I might say that we have some lurking force out there.”

He turned about and bawled, in parade-ground thunder, at the Parson.

“Come on back,” he said. “Turn about and come back slowly, probing all the way, being careful to follow the track that you made going in.”

“I notice,” said Lansing, “that you were not so meticulous as to follow your old trail. You broke new ground, in a manner of speaking.”

The Brigadier ignored him.

Far down the road Jurgens had turned around and was coming back. He was handling the crutch somewhat better, having learned how to swing his stiffened leg, but his progress was still slow.

The Brigadier said to Lansing, “Did you see what that blighter was the last pass that it made?”

“No, I did not,” Lansing told him. “It was lightning fast. Too fast for one to see.”

The Parson had worked his way back along the wall and was starting down the track that he had made going to the wall, industriously using his pole to probe each inch of the way.

“A good man,” the Brigadier said, approvingly. “He follows orders well.”

They stood and watched the Parson inch his way along. Jurgens finally reached them and stood with them in the roadway. The Parson reached the road. With evident relief, he threw his pole to one side and came over to them.

“And now that it’s all done,” said the Brigadier, “perhaps we should go back to camp and regroup as best we can.”

“It’s not a question of regrouping,” said the Parson. “It’s a question of getting out of here. This place is hazardous. Well guarded, as you have good reason to know,” he said, looking at the Brigadier. “I think that we should leave this place. I have no wish to stay here. I suggest that immediately we move on to the city and see what we find there. A better reception, I would hope, than we have been accorded here.”

“Your sentiments,” said the Brigadier, “are very much my own. I see no profit in our staying here.”

“But the fact that it is so well guarded,” said Mary, “must testify that there is something worth that guarding. I’m not sure we should leave here.”

“Maybe, later on,” said the Brigadier, “we can return, if need be. First we should see the city.”

The Brigadier and the Parson moved off, heading for the camp. Sandra followed them.

Mary moved close to Lansing. “I think they’re wrong,” she said. “I think there’s something here — perhaps what we are supposed to find.”

“The trouble,” Lansing told her, “is that we don’t know what to find or if there’s anything at all that we are supposed to seek. I am very much concerned about the whole proceedings.”

“When it comes right down to that, so am I.”

Jurgens came limping up the road to join them.

“How does it go?” asked Lansing.

“Rather well,” the robot told him, “but I still am slow. I do not know if, with this crutch, I’ll ever achieve the speed and dexterity of my former self.”

“I have not the faith the Brigadier has in the city up ahead,” said Mary. “If, in fact, there is a city.”

“One can never know,” said Jurgens. “We must wait and see.”

“Let’s go back to camp,” said Lansing, “and cook up a pot of coffee. We can talk it over. For my part, I believe the cube may be rather promising. If we look at it hard enough, we may detect a clue that is invisible to us now, unnoticed by us now. As we see it now, it has no significance. It’s misplaced. It’s not the sort of structure one would expect to find sitting out here by itself. There must, however, be some reason for it. It must serve some purpose. Like you, Mary, I’d feel better if we could derive just an inkling of its purpose.”

“So would I,” she said. “I dislike situations that have no meaning.”

“So we’ll go back to camp and talk with the others,” Lansing said.

When they reached the camp, they found that the others had made up their minds.

“We have consulted among ourselves,” said the Brigadier. “Among the three of us. We have decided that we should push on for the city with all possible speed. The robot would hold us back, so we think that he should be left behind to make his own way as best he can. In a matter of time he will catch up with us.”

“That’s a stinking thing to do,” said Mary. “You let him carry a full pack, mostly food — food for you, not for him since he needs none. You allowed him to do camp chores. You sent him to fill canteens with water when he drinks no water. You accepted him, perhaps not as one of us, but as a servant, and now that he’s been damaged you suggest we leave him behind.”

“He’s naught but a robot,” said the Parson. “No human, but a mere machine.”

“And yet worthy to be included in this venture,” said Mary, “whatever this venture may be. And do I need to remind you that he was hand picked, as we were hand picked, by someone who thought he should be with us.”

“How about you, Lansing?” asked the Brigadier. “So far you’ve said not a thing. How do you feel about it?”

“I stay with Jurgens,” said Lansing. “I refuse to desert him. If I were the one who was crippled and unable to keep up with you, he would stay with me. Of that I’m certain.”

“And I as well,” said Mary. “I’m staying with the robot. You are being panicked, foolish if not panicked. In this country we should not divide our forces. Why this great hurry for the city?”

“There’s nothing here,” said the Brigadier. “We may find something in the city.”

“Then go ahead and find it,” Mary said. “Edward and I will stay with Jurgens.”

Jurgens said, “Fair lady, I would not wish to become a point of controversy—”

“You shut up,” said Lansing. “This is our decision. You have no voice in it.”

“Then I guess there is no more to say,” said the Brigadier. “We three go on, you two stay with the robot to follow us.”

“How about it, Sandra?” Mary asked. “Are you throwing in with those two?”

“There seems no reason I should remain behind with you,” said Sandra. “As they say, there is nothing here. Only the beauty of the cube and—”

“We can’t be sure of that. Be sure there’s nothing here.”

“We are sure of it,” said the Parson. “We have talked it over. And now that it is settled, we should make a distribution of the food supply the robot was carrying.”

He took a stride toward Jurgens’s pack, but Lansing moved to get between the Parson and the pack.

“Not so fast,” he said. “That pack belongs to Jurgens and it stays with us.”

“But share and share alike!”

Lansing shook his head. “If you’re deserting us, you manage with the food you have. No more.”

The Brigadier growled and stepped forward. “What do you expect to gain by this?” he asked.

“Assurance that you’ll wait for us at the city. That you won’t go running off. If you want any of the food, you’ll wait for us.”

“You know that we can take it.”

“I’m not sure you can,” said Lansing. “In all my life I’ve never struck a man, but if you force me to it, I’ll fight both of you.”

Jurgens hobbled up to stand beside Lansing. “Nor have I ever struck a human,” he said, “but should you attack my friend, I’ll stand with him.”

Mary spoke to the Brigadier. “I think you had best back off. I imagine a battling robot would prove an ugly customer.”

The Brigadier started to say something, then apparently thought better of it. He walked over to his own pack and hoisted it to a shoulder, slipping his arms through the straps and settling it on his back.

“Come on,” he said to the other two. “We should be on our way.”

The three left behind stood and watched them until the road went over a rise and the three people traveling it disappeared from sight.