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Title: Prisoner of the Brain-Mistress
Author: Bryce Walton
Release Date: November 10, 2020 [EBook #63709]
Language: English
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Prisoner of the Brain-Mistress
By BRYCE WALTON
The silver sphere bobbed beside the Brain. It
began to glow, and suddenly to expand, and I
felt myself drawn toward it. Then I became
part of it, part of the heat and brightness
and whirling, and I could feel myself melting
away--until I became nothing....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There are all kinds of men labeled with all sorts and degrees of psycho
tags. For what it's worth, I have always been primarily motivated by an
insatiable urge for action.
I have always awakened with faculties sharp and eyes clear, ready for
any emergency of which there are plenty in these chaotic years of
social adjustment from the Twentieth to the Twenty-fifth Century. This
awakening I knew would exceed in magnitude any I had known. I knew I
was in a place to which the little alien man had brought me.
I was stretched out on a smooth cold table of metal. I was also
aware of a contraption of unknown purpose clamped about my skull,
and my entire store of bodily faculties seemed vitally prepared for
any eventuality, as though steeling itself for a subconsciously
preconceived super-human effort.
I still hesitated about opening my eyes. It wasn't from physical fear
which I have learned to convert into mental and physical energy. There
was a fear of that alienness. Alien was the word for the little man
with the bulbous head and crinkled little face of a premature child.
I knew that his outer dress and hairless, swollen and blue-veined
skull, and the invisible electronic force that had brought us here,
were all of some other time, world, dimension, or something of all
three.
It wasn't exceptional on my part to be thinking of such fantastic
possibilities in such a calm and detached a manner. Nothing seems
fantastic anymore to a Twenty-fifth Centurian. Nothing. What we have
not actually seen practiced through the marvels of chemistry and
electronics, we have been trained to believe possible. We have two
great goals facing us around the corner of probability--an Elixir of
Life from some bio-chemical laboratory, and a ship constructed for an
ultimate landing on a distant star.
But first, we must readjust the various political factions which
prevent integration of human potential.
The last effort is the gigantic one. All other sciences have advanced
beyond the science of society which is still infantile, but learning to
walk more or less alone. The goal of global social integration is in
sight, but the battle will still be long and difficult. This all leads
to the body of this story--to the World-City of Mohln, to which the
Scientist, Draken, brought me for the fulfillment of a grandiose and
necessary, but horribly destructive destiny.
When the Fascisti wormed their way underground after their crushing
defeat by the forces of World Democracy, after the close of that
episode of evolutionary birth pangs called World War II, they created
a small, evil and powerful recalcitrant force of reaction, seeking to
regain minority control over the Earth Mass. Their threat is their
secrecy. They never work openly; they are too small in number; but
their acts of sabotage and political intrigue is disheartening at
times, and a constant threat to our Administrative balance.
As elected Commander of the International Secret Police, my sole duty
is to combat the specially trained cult of sabateurs of our democratic
World-State, the Black Spartans.
Somehow that night--I've never been able to find the leak--two of them
gained the top of my apartment building and were hiding on the roof
landing as I stepped out to enter my jet-car.
* * * * *
There was no warning, no challenge. Their aim was simply to burn me
out. Some well-trained intuitive sense threw me in a long dive forward
and sidewise as the shaft of deadly heat crackled past and smoked
beside my outstretched hand.
My E-special blaster was out and ready even as I hit the fine plastic
mesh of the roof. I twisted over and burned a swath in their direction.
I came up to one knee, keeping their area lanced with rays, then to my
feet, going to one side and trying to distinguish their black plastic
suits from the shadows.
A form stumbled out of the thick dark. It was half bent forward,
grasping its middle. I smelled scorched flesh and knew he must be
mortally injured, but I couldn't afford to underestimate the fanatical
power of a Spartan.
He was still coming at me, so I burned him again, watched him crumble
and sag. That was an error. The other Spartan, who was still somewhere
back in the shadows of the collonade, blasted my arm, burning it half
through. I watched my fingers curl and my E-special fall out and away
slowly as in a dream.
There wasn't pain, physical pain. There was sheer mental anguish as
I visualized myself closing my career of duty for the World-State, a
failure. I knew what they wanted with my corpse. Dead, my cerebrum
would be removed, activated, and its mental storage released through
electronic recorders the Spartan scientists had developed. They
preferred a brain taken from death as there was no slightest difficulty
from conscious or even subconscious resistance.
But the Spartan couldn't burn me without a parting voice. His egomania
demanded that I see and hear the power that had defeated me. He came
out of the shadows, a black muscled melodramatic outline.
"Goodby," he slurred in a thick accent. "For a reputed great man, you
employ pathetic guards. Your force is growing weak and negligent,
Allinger. Soon our long wait and our long fight will reach its
victorious end, even as you reach your shameful end now."
The Spartan tensed his blaster and I leaped straight into it,
desperately, because I had nothing to lose.
I never got to him, and his blaster never got to me. I hit something
painfully and bounced off. My arm was a lump of burning agony as I
thudded to the roof, stunned by an impact with an invisible barrier.
The Spartan was discharging his blaster at me, but the power rebounding
flung him to his knees. The blaster was knocked over the side of the
roof-landing, and the Spartan staggered to his feet again, and weaved
back.
Then, abruptly, his eyes bulged with awe that changed to terror. He
backed away, staring, not at me, but at something beside me. Then the
Spartan disappeared suddenly. I heard a faint _whirring_ that rose up
and faded rapidly. For an instant I followed the sound of the jet-car
as it receded toward the red moon outlining the archaic structure of
the Golden Gate Bridge, then I turned to see what had saved my life. It
had been prolonged at least.
I hadn't been at all surprised to see the little man appear on the
private jet-car landing of my San Francisco apartment. There had been
no sound, only coruscating shifting hues of light that materialized
him, not like the magic of old, but with all the magnificent and
unlimited magic of science.
He stood there juggling the huge silver globe like a bubble toy, but
one that certainly could never burst. His long, delicate arms and legs
and torso couldn't have lifted twenty pounds without straining. The
silver sphere must be elevated by unknown forces of its own.
The little man's body, only a bit more than bone tightly stretched over
with transparent, form fitting material, swayed toward me. The pinched
up, chalk face in the midst of that bulging head studied me with
enigmatic lack of expression that was extremely disconcerting. I could
read plenty of purpose behind the blankness. So much elaborate ritual
demanded proportionate purpose.
The ancient bulky structure of the Bridge twinkled its lights against
the night sky behind the little man. Or was it the twitching of my
eyes? I was preparing for a run over to the Federal Building for
a meeting of the Pacific Defense Zone of the International Peace
Maintenance Fleet, but, important as that meeting was to be, I had
forgotten it completely.
* * * * *
His voice was nasal, squeaky, and somehow contemptuous. It was halting,
too, difficult to follow. I doubted if he had ever employed the
International symbols before. In fact, I intuitively knew that he was
either not of my time at all, or not of my world.
"I have studied the psychology of all potential men for the task that
is to follow. I have chosen you, Ivan Allinger."
"Should I be flattered?"
I studied him, but could reach no conclusion.
The face puckered more. "Flattered?" The meaning of the word seemed
to escape him for a moment. "Perhaps. It is a great task. I have not
chosen you because of your physical attributes alone, although they
seem exceptional enough. Your ideological background will synchronize
perfectly with the job that you must do in Mohln."
"Mohln?"
"It is another world. A future and far distant one."
"You are from some future time? Really?"
"Yes. Mohln is another planet of this system, to which your descendants
will migrate in a length of time you would label one million years.
Our greatest scientist, the atavistic female, Jokan, demanded that
I go back into the past of the race and seek out an object for her
laboratory experiments."
I accepted him as he presented himself, which is always advisable under
such circumstances. "I'm afraid that doesn't sound inviting at all," I
explained. "A guinea pig of some sort for future scientific probing.
Sorry." I started away, though I knew he could stop me when he pleased.
It was a test. But he stopped me with a word.
"Wait, Ivan."
I turned. "Yes?"
"My reasons for choosing you are different from Jokan's reasons. Let me
explain." He tottered toward me weakly on his spindly legs. I towered
over him as he squinted up into my face.
"There are many reasons why I cannot allow your refusal," he said. "One
great reason that ties you with destiny."
I tried to escape then, feeling that he was right. I knew that a series
of unimaginable events were twisting me into cosmic circumstances.
Circumstances too gigantic to even excite amazement or disbelief,
only stunned passivity. I wasn't able to execute an about face or the
lifting of one leg that might possibly have sent me beyond the range of
the little man's potentiality.
I had forgotten the silver sphere which bobbed beside him as a
monstrous toy might. It began to glow and expand into a great bulb
of incandescence, and it caught me immediately and paralyzed me, and
sucked me into realms of cosmology beyond the wildest imaginings of all
the Einsteins. I actually felt the sensation of melting. Of melting and
flowing as an integral part of space-time, for want of a better phrase.
I was an atomic drop of liquid poured into a river without beginning,
end or embankments. Perfection was an empty, archaic word to me. I had
never thought it could be intellectually employed, and I was especially
careful not to apply it to that shifting abstract--woman. I was looking
at it now. A perfect woman. A creation molded from centuries of
perfection; a creation of symmetric loveliness that was literally and
figuratively out of this world.
My last day on Earth was ended. I had opened my eyes. I saw first that
some miracle of science had reconstructed the burned away half of my
right arm. Then I noticed the woman. I was sitting bolt upright in an
instant on the smooth metal table. The little man with his strange
"Buck Rogers" dress was looking quietly at me. And she was looking at
me, too, out of slitted lids that veiled all the women of the ages in
subtly yet violently burning eyes.
She lifted a jeweled hand. Her sensual lips trembled a little before
they parted, and strong white teeth gleamed provocatively between the
red lines.
I started, and gripped hard at the edges of the table. Was this the
way a woman scientist studied coldly and objectively a prospective
laboratory subject? I looked questioningly at the little wizened man
who had kidnaped me from my own world. His blank face showed me
nothing.
Then, when she spoke....
I don't want to take unnecessary time at this point or any other to
explain or describe this woman, Jokan. I doubt if you could visualize
her anyway, even if I occupied this entire narrative describing her,
because she was too strangely lovely. She was perfection, as I've said,
and that's all. Her voice was music, and I involuntarily started toward
her as she spoke.
* * * * *
"Withdraw the brain recorder, Draken," she said softly, not taking
those icy eyes from mine. The little man, Draken, complied. She pointed
to a great three-dimensional chart extending across the laboratory.
It was made up of shifting convolutions and numerical graphs and
complicated combinations of shadings corresponding to brain patterns.
"That is your brain, Ivan," she said. Her voice was cold, completely
frozen, and yet--"We know all about you." I felt a little
disappointment along with the relief. She turned toward Draken.
"You made a great mistake, Draken. Bringing in an Intellectual was a
foolish thing to do."
Draken objected. "But you said you wanted a good physical specimen.
This man is. You defined your requested specimen in no greater detail."
"But you should know that an intellectual can cause difficulties. This
man would be considered a god among the women. Perhaps even among
the men. Mohln is at a point where such an element as this could
precipitate disaster, create perhaps a germ of dissatisfaction with our
great order. Or is that, by chance, what you intend?"
Draken backed away. "No, it isn't."
"Don't let the presence of this man be known beyond these four walls,
or out of your own laboratory. For your sake and mine, heed my
suggestion, Draken."
"Yes," quivered Draken. "I am heeding it. But you know my attitude
toward this _great_ order. You know how I regard the maintenance of the
Status Quo."
I knew it too, from the way his pallid lips curled. This little man
hated the Mohln system, whatever it was.
Jokan got languidly to her feet, a fluid musical allegro. "I know,
Draken. If you weren't the greatest thinker in Mohln besides myself, I
would report you to the Council for the Maintenance of the Status Quo.
But as long as you only think idly, you can cause Mohln no harm."
"The only harm Mohln can suffer," said Draken wearily, "is to continue
on as it does now. Toward final decay and rot."
Jokan laughed frostily. I shivered. "Stop worrying, Draken, and go
away. I must begin my experiments." She turned her eyes on me. She
could have stared down a bronze statue. I turned my eyes from hers on
the pretense of looking for Draken, but he was gone.
I jumped to my feet, and the movement revealed that I, too, had on the
costume that Draken wore.
Without egoism, I can say that it must have looked more becoming on me
than on the little scientist. I was at least a foot taller than Jokan.
She came toward me, fluid motion. I couldn't back away--I insist I
wanted to get away for various reasons, the least being that I wanted
to get solid on my mental feet--from the metal table. I looked almost
frantically for a door or some kind of exit, even a window. There was
nothing.
Then those perfect arms slipped around my neck and that body pressed
itself against mine and--
I am only human. That's a trite enough excuse, if an excuse is
necessary, but under those conditions I could certainly do no less. I
let my arms come around her perfect waist, and I bent her back in the
most acceptable televex manner and planted a long solid one right on
those perfect lips--lips I'm very certain had never been kissed before.
And that was precisely the trouble, perhaps, with that thoughtless,
but irresistible, impulse of mine. Her nails were long and sharp and
they clawed at my face. Cold light blazed in her eyes, flashing with
outraged dignity and burning hate.
I swung down and away, sliding across the metal table, and stood with
blood running down my face, with the table my only protection between
myself and this paradoxical Circe.
"Savage," she shrieked, and shrieking was very unbecoming to the cold
austerity of her. In fact it was like a cloak I had torn away from her
body. "Primal, barbaric beast!"
"I'm not quite primal enough to cope with you," I said, looking more
frantically still for an exit. There still weren't any exits, but
people came into this room, and people went out of it. How?
I expected her to vault the table after me, but she lithely backed
away, and though I didn't realize it then, her cold brain was summoning
her eunuchs from afar.
A section of the wall to one side began to glow like a light through
semi-opaque glass. The light deepened and began to whirl. And then I
saw that there was a kind of opening there. Yes. A kind of opening with
something promising no good lumbering through, its head and massive
shoulders projecting up out of the shifting mist like a televexed
fictional monster.
It was a monstrous metal man. A real, animated robot out of an old
scientification fabrication. It was coming directly for me. I flashed
one look--I think it was a beseeching one--at Jokan. In such instances
as that people swallow great lumps of their pride.
* * * * *
Jokan was stretched up to her complete height against the far wall. Her
face was expressionless, and her eyes oozed liquid oxygen. Her hands
were strained into fists at her sides. "Atavistic," Draken had said of
this female scientist of Mohln. An understatement promising no hope for
consideration.
I dodged beneath the robot's reaching appendages. There were three arms
with a number of variously utilized digits at the end of each. And all
of them were wicked. Many of them designed for purposes I couldn't
grasp. Anyway I looked at it, the robot represented a perfect mauling
and crushing instrument.
I can describe it now with a light touch. _Then_ I was trembling with
cold fear, and sweat poured off my face as I eluded the robot by
dodging about the only fixture in the middle of the room, the table. I
noticed a minor motion of Jokan; then I watched, with a hideously empty
stomach, the table fold itself into the floor.
I leaped to one side and grabbed Jokan, twisted her around in front of
me, and said with as little chattering as possible into her perfect
pink little ear, "Call them off or--"
I tightened my arm about her throat and began bending her head back.
She writhed around and kicked me, and her finger nails started their
old habit pattern again. But she wasn't used to this sort of thing, and
didn't employ any real effeminate technique at all.
I continued bending her head back. I could feel her choking and
gasping. She knew then that I would kill her. I hadn't asked to come
to Mohln, wherever and whenever it was. It was all something I had
nothing to do with, that now threatened my life. All directly the
responsibility of Jokan. To me, she was a real Circe, deserving no
sympathy, only hate, and deserving death. But I could never have
actually tried, or threatened to kill her, under less pressing
conditions than those. It was simply a case of breaking her neck to
save mine, which I consider justified.
The metallic digits squeezed shut on each elbow, from behind. I twisted
my head upward at the second robot, sweating pain in my eyes. Unfeeling
paralysis then, as the digits tore through muscle tendon, nerve fibers
and even cracked bone. I was mouthing sounds, probably screaming,
hearing my own cries from a great distance, blinded by pain, a mist
blurring my eyes.
I was lifted straight up, then swung down beneath one implacable arm.
I dangled there, my crushed elbows swinging and dripping beneath my
face. I saw those perfect little feet come up and stand in front of
my tortured eyes. And they _were_ perfect little feet, encased in red
sandals to match the blood from my wounds. Even facing torture, and
possible death, I thought of them as perfect little feet. I didn't
attempt to twist my face upward.
I kept on staring crazily at those perfect little feet. There was
character and expression in them, different and more sympathetic than
the body they supported. They came closer, shifted a bit, uncertain
and nervous. I had been brought here as the subject for anatomical
research, a laboratory specimen to be dissected. Yet, for an instant,
another purpose had shown in Jokan's eyes. I knew that, or did I merely
want to know it. I tried to imagine how terribly lonely and maladjusted
she must be in a loveless world. Beautiful and to be desired, yet in a
loveless, sexless world.
With specimens like Draken, I could easily guess that this was the
kind of world in which Jokan lived out frustration. Perfect women, and
pathetic, skin-and-bone puppets for men.
She had said I would be a god among women. Without egoism, again, I
could see why. There was too much gross ambiguity. The women and men
just didn't seem to be of identical species. And in addition, Jokan was
an atavistic.
Which wouldn't matter anymore to me, because I was being dragged out of
there. Where? Into what? How could I know? I watched those feet fade
into blurred distance. They were whirling around as they faded. I knew
I was losing all grasp of consciousness. Which was all right, too,
because hard after the initial shock, the real excruciating agony was
beginning to shoot into my brain.
Only a few hours later, that's all, and I was all in one piece again.
A more effective and healthy feeling organism than before, thanks to
incredible biological treatments I couldn't even guess at. I kept
flexing my arms, watching them bend and unbend with questioning
fascination.
I turned toward Draken. "Why am I still here and alive?"
Draken's embryonic face puckered at me like an impish child's.
He explained: "Jokan is an atavist as I said. Women have always been
noted for their bodies rather than their brains, although potentially
their brain capacity has always been equal to the male's. And that
cultural error has never been changed. Instead, women have grown more
beautiful and symmetrical with the centuries, from the standpoint of
decadent and ancient aesthetic values. The men, on the other hand,
have always been considered as thinkers rather than as creations of
beauty. They have developed brain potential alone, while their physical
characteristics have atrophied.
"Except for atavists like Jokan, the overly curious longing for the
male body, as you represent it, has been conditioned out of the
reaction patterns by the psycho-medics by centuries of selection.
Jokan, as you have seen, is different. She demanded that I go back
to your time, or even further back and return with a man capable of
matching her body in physical attraction. You enraged her for a
moment, but she has recovered from that momentary emotional unbalance."
* * * * *
I objected at this point. "But you said I was to be just a laboratory
specimen for dissection."
"This whole transaction was elaborate and demanded official sanction
from the Council. So, on the record, your space-time teleportation is
only for biological purposes. You understand."
I nodded. It was not an exceptional situation, basically. It seemed
that a few million years of evolution can't destroy the fundamental
behavior patterns entirely. "A good man's still hard to find?"
The little scientist stared in blank affirmation. Then he said: "I
could have chosen any number of men who could have satisfied Jokan's
demands, perhaps even more thoroughly than you. Don't you wonder
why I singled you out? With your background in your world, and your
ideological concepts, you were the only one for me to chose--for my own
purposes."
"Which are--" I prompted.
"Neither of the preceding purposes are the basic ones for my asking you
to return here with me. The real reason is that you must destroy Mohln."
I stared. I turned everything over in my mind, then tried to say
calmly: "Why? This is civilization and the apex of human progress for
which I face death daily in my own time. Destroy it!"
I had begun to regard this little withered man as a first class
fanatic, born of highly complicated and advanced psychological
conflicts.
He said: "When the Earth was enveloped in its final ice sheet, living
as we demanded it ceased to be feasible. The pick of human mentality
and physiognomy migrated here to Mohln. Here we began our great--what
we thought great--new and scientific social order. Yes, it's reached
a zenith all right. A zenith of decay and stagnation. Except for a
few scientists, Mohln is populated by mindless automatons. Beautiful,
mindless women, and great brained, spineless men. They all exist in a
futile vacuum."
I was watching him narrowly for signs of madness. He looked mad enough,
but his squeezed up face was unreadable. I said feebly: "From what
little experience I've had here, you seem to have reached a pretty
ultimate state of civilization."
"That is the great tragedy. There is no ultimate state. That is the
great delusion which you must shatter. Everyone, societies, worlds, all
seek an ultimate state. Change is the law, and there is no ultimate
law. This world of Mohln thinks it has achieved an ultimate perfection.
It has, because of the delusion, only succeeded in stagnation. This
social structure is neither alive nor dead, Ivan Allinger. It is
standing still. The ultimate futility is to be static."
"Then you refute yourself," I said, feeling for a sophistic insert.
"You have reached an ultimate something."
"Only movement is the ultimate goal. And change is success.
Advancement--progress is limitless. This culture of Mohln has reached
an ultimate lostness. Only one action can shake it back onto the
pattern of change. The entire World-City of Mohln must be destroyed,
reduced to chaos. Out of this chaos, by trial and error, the people
of Mohln must be given the germ of incentive again, and forced by
necessity to fight their way back onto new roads of endeavor."
I thought hard. I felt familiar struggles in my heart. I understood
this. My own life was dedicated, back in my own space and time, to this
same effort and goal--to stimulate progress, and change; to destroy all
reactionary elements that might lead to permanence.
He followed my introspection with words. "You fought in the great wars
of your time against the reactionary forces that would have led your
society into staticism and decay. You are devoting the present to the
furthering of the ideals of progress. Do you want to see all your work,
and all the work of all your kind, of your own present, past and future
end in--this?"
He spread his withered arms about him, encompassing the whole of the
World-City of Mohln.
"No," I heard myself muttering. "No. I wouldn't want that. I would
prevent it, if I could. But I demand more than your words to convince
me that this magnificence of organization I see about me is the
hopeless futility you are telling me it is."
"I will take you out into the city and show you," he said. "But it is
strictly against the rules of the Council. And the few intellectuals,
the scientists and research technicians don't care anymore about the
disintegration of the order about them. In their own little worlds they
find something to work on, a stimulus, and they ignore everything else.
Like Jokan."
* * * * *
Draken led me out onto a balcony, and I saw--well, a word that might
inspire somewhat explanatory suggestive visions of what I saw, in your
own mind, could be the symbol, Utopia. It was an endlessly stretching
composite of all social dreams.
The mauve lighting that softened the city like a beautiful mist. The
mighty, gleaming plastic shells of buildings. Power hung at levels
reaching high toward a translucent dome that covered the city. Tiers on
tiers of splendidly designed walkways, tubeways and highways networked
the spaces between structures. And the air sang with music, more
magnificent than all the symphonies of my own time.
I forgot the dizzying height, and almost stepped out into the exalting
splendor of it. There seemed no danger, as though it were all an
endless soft cloud of enchantment into which I could sink, then float
buoyed up by dreams and music and shifting light....
But the little tugging fingers of Draken dragged me back.
"It is all false," he whispered. "It is all delusion. Beneath all
this grandeur the lost puppets dance and sleep, but never live. These
words, which are the only words that make a social system worthy
of continuation--curiosity, incentive, ambition, drive, longing,
dissatisfaction--all meaningless here, all unknown to these pathetic
tropisms. If you will come with me, you can see for yourself, and
understand."
I went with little Draken. I did see for myself. I understood....
And Draken was entirely correct in all that he had said. This
World-City of Mohln had achieved an ultimate--an ultimate lostness. It
was a magnificent hollow shell of a City. There were no people in it.
All the mighty wonder was lost to the semi-living marionettes that
wandered through it. But it meant life to them, nevertheless. They
never had to exert a finger, nor expend the energy of one thousandth of
a gram of thinking energy to live. But the technocratic creations of
long preceding times, of even a few still working scientists, kept them
alive. But they neither knew this, nor cared.
They were fed, clothed, bathed and even reborn by robots. They were put
to sleep, awakened, vitalized, and exhausted by machines. They were
parasitic non-entities, dependent on the machines that other, _vital_
minds, had built.
Back on the balcony, Draken continued in that squeaky, uncertain quaver
of his:
"Everything here is done by robots. There are different castes of
robots. Their functional system is graduated up through ever lessening
numbers until it reaches what is only a master switch. One single
switch in this World-City, pushed too far--" Draken looked at me
suggestively and added hoarsely:
"If the master switch was ever pushed too far, this entire
civilization, as you call it, would stop functioning with any set
mechanical pattern. All the robots and machines and the system they
operate would cease activity. There would be your chaos. There would
be the needed situation under which the unthinking slaves will have to
think for themselves, solve their own problems once again. Or die. I
think they will solve them. I have that much faith in them. They always
have. So far."
It was a statement on Draken's part. But it was really a question.
Would I push that master switch--too far?
"Why haven't _you_ done this before?" I asked. "Why drag a man from
another world, a million years in the past, to do this simple thing?"
Draken lowered his head in the first display of real, understandable
emotion I had seen in him. Shame. "I can't," he said simply. "I do
not have the will, the free will to do it. My intellect tells me it
is the correct thing to do. But my psycho-conditioning has created an
insurmountable antipathy toward such an act."
His dried up monkey-like hands clenched into tiny impotent fists. "Many
times I have gone into that room and tried to pull that switch. But
each time I have failed. I know now that I shall never be able to. No
one in this world could do it until you came. You can. Your age was a
dynamic one, of destruction and construction, each inseparable from the
other. You could do it, not only with ease, but with the satisfaction
of knowing you were taking a necessary step forward in human progress.
The question is--will you?"
* * * * *
A lot of time clambered through my fogged mind then before I formulated
a logical sequence of thoughts that led to what seemed to me a logical
reply.
"I believe I will," I finally answered slowly. "I can't see that there
is any other way out."
"Execution," a familiarly brittle voice said behind me, and I turned.
Draken began whimpering pathetically and cowered back against the
colonnade.
Jokan stood a few feet from me, wearing a thin, semi-transparent gown
that seemed anachronistic and out of place, as though she had gotten
the idea for it out of an old history book. Her body was a lithe shadow
behind it. But her eyes burned irrascible hatred.
"Execution for you, and for Draken; that is a better way."
"I wish I could agree," I said. "But you see our concern is for society
as a whole, rather than with a small minority that benefit from the
apathy and ignorance of the majority. For your satisfaction, and that
of a few others, you may be right. Frankly, dear Jokan, though you're
very very lovely to look at, your mind is ugly and warped. And I would
rather see you dead."
I sprang and reached for her. She screamed once, before the robots came
in and lumbered for me. I remember mumbling about the monotony of the
robot act; as she eluded me, and I eluded them. And I kept on trying to
grab Jokan. It was an obsession with me.
A quick glance revealed Draken cowered down in his corner, his old
child's face twisted in stunned horror.
My only intention at that moment was to get my hands around Jokan's
perfect neck just one more time. It was a mad, fanatical urge now. I
hated her. I hated her with a blind madness.
The robots weren't nearly as dexterous as they should have been.
Physical encounter was undoubtedly alien to their primary purpose.
This place of Draken's was bigger, with a few articles in it, than the
laboratory had been. There were pneumatic chairs and couches and ray
lamps and vitamin globes. I ducked, sprawled, ran and careened in and
out of these rooms and around the strange looking fixtures. I, close
on Jokan's sandaled heels, and the robots close on mine. It might even
seem more or less a comical scene in retrospect, but--
Then I saw that silver sphere of Draken's, hanging in the air about
four feet from the floor, smooth, mysterious, but very suggestive. As I
ran back past Draken, I yelled at him.
I doubt if Draken understood my words, he was so stricken with horror,
but he grasped my meaning, and somehow managed to stagger onto his
quavering legs and tottered wild-eyed toward the sphere.
But Jokan understood my meaning, too. And through some telepathic
direction I still don't understand, she guided the robots onto poor
Draken. Draken never had a chance.
I don't think he even comprehended conflict. He could neither fight
back, nor try to escape. It seemed that violence, either offensive or
defensive, was beyond his understanding. That was why he could not
bring himself to pull the master switch that would have accomplished
his desired destruction of Mohln. That was also the reason why the
robot was able to take him into its inexorable metal arms and crush him
into something not far removed from pulp.
His delicate, deep pocketed eyes looked beseechingly into mine, once.
Then the tremendous pressure bulged them horribly and unconsciously at
me. His bony arms flapped and waved spasmodically and blood spurted
from his small almost invisible ears and equally minute nose. Then
his whole frail body seemed to crack through the middle and deflate.
At another telepathic command from Jokan, the robot's arms raised and
unbent, and the body of Draken thudded on the inlaid floor.
I heard myself yelling. I wasn't retreating from the other two robots
then, or trying to get away at all. Something gave way inside me.
What I had seen just now shocked every sense that might have been
ethical or moral in me. One word churned inside my brain. The word was
revenge. And then another word was added to it that seemed better.
Compensation. Then another word etched in capital letters overshadowed
and encompassed the other two. _Kill._
* * * * *
The first robot reached out with its very utilitarian and
gadget-studded arms to rake me in. I had no idea how much the monster
weighed. But the Frankensteinian creation was off balance as it reached
for me. I twisted and grasped the metalic tentacle, heaved forward,
throwing my hip into the gleaming stomach and heaved down.
The robot seemed light-weighted enough as it flew ceilingward, and
clanged hollowly against the wall. There was a flash of current, a
slight odor of ozone as the teleo-electronic man twitched about at my
feet.
The violence evidently stunned my fair and wicked Circe. Her telepathic
control over the remaining robots faltered and in that instant I seized
her. A dead, hot rage swelled through my head and heart so I could
hardly draw a breath. I wrenched at her neck, felt it crack dangerously
and felt her long sleek muscles tremble against mine.
I felt almost bestial in the power of my rage. I twisted sidewise
and felt her body give, and heard her breath coming in short jagged
whines like a dog's. Her finger nails weren't clawing now. The cold,
emotionless cruelty of her eyes was dying behind fear and indecision.
She hadn't been reluctant to dream of blood and guts and shattered
bones, but too much of the real thing hurt even her atavistic senses.
"Keep them off me," I said in her ear. She tried to pull away. I held
her at arm's length and began slapping her. Her face was white as
powder until red finger marks appeared on it. I hit harder and her
perfect upper lip split and a narrow line of blood ran down and stained
the dark hollow between her perfect marble breasts. The gold-flecked
pupils of her eyes widened, and the horror deepened in back of them.
The the horror went out like a flame and the lids with the perfect long
lashes blinked over them and tears flowed down as from a weeping statue.
I threw a quick circuit about the room. The robots were immobile;
tensed, though, for action. At any moment Jokan might regain her Circe
faculties and summon them, even if it meant her own life. I didn't know
then what emotions surged around inside her strange heart. I lifted her
onto my shoulder and started through the rooms.
I had no idea how to escape. Whatever inconceivable manner the walls
dissolved through the manipulation of incredible advanced force
fields, I of course didn't know. But I put three rooms filled with the
futuristic mores between myself and the robot minions of Jokan before I
dropped her on a pneumatic couch and wrapped my hands about her throat
for the third time and began to squeeze.
I began slowly and methodically, looking all the time into her eyes.
Then I saw it. I saw the real depths of her eyes, and a shock trembled
through me. Jokan had changed. How she had changed!
She read the implacable purpose in my eyes that I felt in my heart, and
as her arms came up, mine slid down softly from about her throat. I
kissed her. I lifted her passive softness up and felt it respond. The
hands with the feral nails caressed the back of my neck, and her lips
were hungry.
I had seen in her eyes a change, and had answered it. Then I said:
"Lead me to the room that holds the master switch. Then we'll go."
She slid out of my arms languidly and onto her feet. She leaned toward
me, and her fingers grasped mine. They were warm, not cold; how could
they ever have been cold? "Go where?"
"Can you run that space-time apparatus that brought me here?"
She nodded, then looked fearfully over my face.
"Take me to the main switch," I repeated.
We went back, and she somehow attracted the translucent, yet not
translucent, sphere to her side. It followed after her like a monstrous
being, a cosmic slave.
She led me toward the wall and it dissolved. I still am not able to
understand the phenomenon. We continued through and into an elevator.
We dropped down through a blur of distance. She led me through a
glowing tunnel and into a tubecar and there was a dim sensation of
movement in which we might have sped a thousand miles, or ten thousand.
She led me out of the tubecar and we crossed a walkway, where lines
of listless people stood moving in various directions. The little
swollen-headed men and the tall austere but listless women. They were
all going places, but it didn't matter. They had eyes, ears, senses,
but they might have been machines reacting through photo-electric
devices. I thirsted for the main switch that would send them all into
blind chaos. It was a hellish thing for the world I had risked my life
many times to build upward and progressively toward greatness. But it
had all ended here, a blind alley of despair, and the hell I planned
would be its only salvation.
Suddenly, from all sides, robots converged on us, directed by a number
of the little white-skulled men with velvet togas flapping about
slug-white spindly legs.
"The Council," said Jokan. "They are afraid now. They attack, and they
are half mad because they have been conditioned that such an act of
violence is atavism, the inexcusable social crime."
* * * * *
Their puckered faces, in the center of the bloated domes of heads,
were strained and flinching. The robots shambled onto Jokan and me,
and Jokan did something to them with her mind which evidently was more
powerful in this capacity at least than all the Council combined. And
the robots turned and began flailing each other into lumps of smoking
twisted metal.
My stomach crawled. The Council, supreme intellects of a million years
of progress, had fallen down onto the moving walkway, slobbering and
twitching in the final stages of dementia. Even a thousand gram brain
breaks when faced with an insolvable problem. The gleaming expanse of
moving plastic carried the Council out of our sight. The little men and
the Amazonian women who slouched past didn't even notice. And if they
did, it was foreign to their conditioning. They couldn't think about it.
They would soon have to think. When I pushed the master switch too
far....
We encountered no more resistance, if that feeble expression of the
apex of human development so far met could be called resistance.
Finally we emerged into a room that surprised me with its lack of
grandeur and its barrenness. All the World-City that was meaningless
was a dream of ostentation and color and beauty of intricate design.
This room, in contrast, the heart of the World-City, the key to its
life, was completely denuded. A small plastic shell and in the middle
was a conical dais and on the dais was a lever.
Jokan nodded toward the lever and her eyes that followed me as I
walked to it and moved it, were bright with some inner fire I couldn't
diagnose.
I jerked my hand away.
The meaning of my act enveloped me in a mist of fear. I trembled
violently. Sweat beaded on my face and smarted in my eyes.
Had I been right in my choice? Had Draken been correct in his analysis,
and had I been justified in jumping to such an empirical conclusion
without more conclusive proof? Had all these nameless slaves of decay
been victims of the delusion from which I had freed them? Or had I been
deluded by the lies of a fanatic?
I looked down and saw my hand reaching for the lever to move it back.
It was an unconscious gesture motivated by vague fears. I seemed such a
little man to destroy a world.
What was happening to all animated puppets of this future society now
that its mechanical contrivances had been destroyed? What had happened,
even back in my own time, in large cities, when only the electric
systems had been blown up, or the water mains, or gas mains? What
mind-numbing chaos and madness must be developing around me as I stood
inside the heart of a world which I had torn loose from its arteries.
Jokan led me from the room and onto a balcony. Somehow I had thought
myself down far in the bowels of this World-City. But as I stepped out,
clouds were on a level with my eyes, synthetic clouds, and wind slapped
my face. We looked down.
Blind in that room with only my imaginative thoughts, the vastness
of my act had been a conceivable thing. Here, looking over the
true vastness, an endlessness, I found my brain whirling, refusing
to consider what was really happening. In a monody of sadness and
fatalism, Jokan recited the meaning to me, as she watched her world
crumble.
A sound surged up and about me. A low murmuring that grew and expanded
into a vibrating roar. To my right, far away, I saw a massive steely
structure explode into a billion fragments and a blinding flash of
power carried to my ears a splitting roar. It began happening all over,
through the tiers and levels and towering heights of the World-City, as
far on any side I looked, as far as I could see.
I cringed. Below, a sea of blind ants scurried madly about in infantile
terror. Flying boats crashed as their automatic pilots stopped
functioning. All the power of the city had ceased. The smoothly working
machinery had become an onrushing nemesis of destruction, each stride
feeding on the preceding flaw in function or the complete lack of any
function.
Huge structures, power-hung, dropped their millions of tons of weight
onto hordes of milling humans who had no idea what was happening--if
they had ever known.
Gravity neutralizing units died and whole tiers collapsed. Unlimited
power from the harnessing of liquid oxygen reversed into a destructive
titan; a wave of overpowering heat rose up in a choking mist. Then the
building on which we stood began to tremble.
I turned. The bobbing sphere of escape was between Jokan and I, a
small supremely compact unit of atomic power, perhaps, conducting its
own motivation. "Why doesn't it stop, too?" I asked, as people ask
ambiguous questions in a crisis.
"It responds to the human mind alone," she said. "We have progressed
far in physiogenics, too, as well as in the mechanical sciences.
Perhaps it is the real world after all. We can go far beyond the
machines."
"We'd better go someplace--fast," I said shakily, for the building
lurched sickeningly, and I toppled back against the wall. The colonnade
buckled in front of me, but Jokan wasn't afraid. She kept looking over
the World-City.
I stumbled toward her. The heat was intensifying, becoming intolerable.
I clutched at her frantically. "You are going with me," I shouted. I
doubt if she heard me. "I love you," I yelled into her ear. "Don't you
understand?" She heard that. Her lips smiled thinly. Pain altered her
face like a plastic mask.
I felt the gigantic power of the sphere then as before. It began to
glow and oscillate and expand. And it sucked me into its limitless
depths and cosmological labyrinths as before. I felt the melting and
flowing and the indescribable twisted warping of sanity....
* * * * *
Jokan, working at my side, has done much to conquer the evil virus
of the Spartan menace. Her scientific knowledge, and her telepathic
acumen, place her above many of our greatest minds. This is enhanced by
an almost fanatical desire to destroy those who would destroy social
progress. Her faithfulness to duty is legendary.
We love each other with ties no one can understand who hesitate to
conceive of bonds extending through dimensions of space and time. She
never leaves my side in the unceasing night and day, crusading against
the Fascistic disease that is being stamped out, though painfully and
with aching slowness, that has extended over six centuries.
But between us there is an uneasiness. Sometimes this uneasiness finds
expression in little episodes--like the conversation at the last
meeting of the International Agencies in Casablanca. We were having
drinks before going into the Presidium.
Jokan was lovely--that's a dismal understatement--in a low cut evening
gown of plasti-silk. Her eyes were half closed.
"Will we ever win?" she said over the brim of a Tom Collins, which is
still the world's favorite cocktail.
"Yes," I said. Then I turned casually, though I didn't feel casual at
all. I knew what she was thinking.
"You must be the greatest optimist of all time," she said. "And I'll
help you and myself and all of us stay that way. I'll never mention it
again. Perhaps we can both forget."
"Try to forget what?" I said, though I knew well enough.
Her eyes fixed mine as only her eyes can. "Forget that the great world
we're fighting so hard to build we will be destroying a million years
from tonight."
I coughed and ordered another drink for myself. But I can't forget.
End of Project Gutenberg's Prisoner of the Brain-Mistress, by Bryce Walton
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