...Divided we fall

By Raymond F. Jones

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Title: ...Divided we fall

Author: Raymond F. Jones

Illustrator: Rod Ruth
        James B. Settles


        
Release date: November 9, 2026 [eBook #79961]

Language: English

Original publication: Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1950

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79961

Credits: Tom Trussel - Stories of Futures Past (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ...DIVIDED WE FALL ***




                           ...Divided We Fall


                          by Raymond F. Jones


[Illustration: He knew he was faced with overwhelming odds, but he
vowed to fight until he fell....]




  =Not until the girl he loved became a hunted thing, branded as a
  freak, did Arthur Zoran declare war on all mankind!=




The eighteen-month job on Cyprian II was done and Arthur Zoran was
coming home. Counting travel time both ways, he had been away from
Earth a full two years.

Through his stateroom window he watched the disc of Earth, growing as
the liner neared home. He imagined the face of Ardyth framed in that
circle like a picture in a locket. He could see her as he remembered
her, a piquant, inquisitive face with very wide, brown eyes. Her
expression was one of perpetual amazement at the wonder of the common
things of Earth. Her hair was deep, golden brown, cut short and pressed
close to her head in the fashion of the times--which Arthur did not
like.

She’d be waiting there at the pier for him; she’d spot him as he left
the port and ran down the gangway. She’d wave and call his name in that
breathless voice that could send little chills through him. Then she’d
be in his arms again, and everything would be as it was before.

Two years.

Six letters.

He sat at the desk and glanced at those letters, which he had laid out
there. He didn’t need to look at them any more. He knew them by memory
now.

The most recent was six months old--three months to reach him, plus his
own three month journey home. None of the letters was the kind a man
expects to receive from the woman he is to marry. Only the first one,
which arrived on the next ship after he reached Cyprian II, was full of
loss at his leaving and anticipation of the time he would return.

The second and third were heavily censored until scarcely a single
intelligible line remained. It was a strange and frightening thing, for
there had been no censorship when Arthur left Earth, nor any cause for
such.

The men of his work crew were equally puzzled and alarmed by their own
communications from home, so heavily garbled by the black swabs, but no
one had any answers.

Then these final three letters came through complete as if censoring
had been abandoned, but Ardyth spoke then as if Arthur had fully
understood the earlier ones.

“The eradication of Syns has gotten fully out of hand,” she wrote.
“Some of us have begun to wonder if the world will ever be the same
again. It can’t be for those of us who have seen helpless creatures
dragged through the streets and killed by crazed mobs.

“We know the Syns are not human, perhaps not even living things in
any sense, but that does not excuse the brutality and terror that
has swept the cities. No one feels safe or sure these days. His most
intimate friends might turn out to be Syns, to be dragged away and
slaughtered. People hardly speak to one another any more. Workers go
from the laboratories and offices to their homes and lock themselves in
with their families and the streets at night are ghostly places were
sometimes Syns prowl and kill--”

       *       *       *       *       *

There was more--much more, for Ardyth had seemed to be pouring out
the terror of her heart in that final letter, but it was all equally
meaningless to Arthur Zoran. He had heard rumors of Syns from other
sources in this final year. A group of workmen brought in from a job
nearer home had carried with them stories of the terror that walked
the streets of Earth’s cities, particularly midwestern America where
the thing seems to have started. They said that the term, Syn, was a
corruption of Synthetic Men. But their stories were still second and
third hand.

It sickened Arthur to think that this was what he and Ardyth would
have surrounding them as they began their lives together. Most of all,
it sickened him to think what it might have done to her. Her letters
were as if she had forgotten every dream they had dreamed together.
Not once--since that first time--had she mentioned the things they had
planned, the white house, the great trees like those of Harold and
Dorothy Weaver with whom she lived.

He would have brought Ardyth to Cyprian and signed on for another
construction period, but even that had become impossible. A total ban
against leaving Earth had been in effect for almost a year. Only the
carefully screened crews of ships were allowed to leave, and Arthur
had not seen any of these until three weeks ago. It was a series of
long and unorganized hops from Earth to Cyprian II. Earth liners
covered only half the distance. The rest of the way was by increasingly
decrepit freighters and tubs of all kinds.

The crew members of the liner he was on were as close mouthed as clams.
He had exulted at the first sight of them and let go with all the
questions he had bottled up for more than a year. They refused a single
answer. His fellow passengers, coming home from scattered points of
expatriation, were equally ignorant.

Burning sunlight advanced upon the port that looked into his room, and
the automatic shades twisted to block out the invading rays and cast an
ochre hue upon the air.

It was a sick dismal color, thought Arthur, the color of death. The
color of the world to which he was going if he could believe but half
of what he had heard.

He watched his hands resting upon his thighs. They looked like the
hands of a mummy in that light. Shrunken and dehydrated by the long,
unhealthful stay on Cyprian II, he was partly glad that Ardyth hadn’t
been permitted to come. He would not have wanted to see her become like
himself, for it was the way all Earthmen became under those conditions.

       *       *       *       *       *

The annunciator chimed and a smooth baritone voice spoke in the room
with sudden, gentle persuasion.

“All passengers will please come at once to the main dining salon.
Instructions and preparations for landing must begin, and you are to be
acquainted with the changes that have taken place upon Earth since you
last saw it. This information is vital to everyone. Stewards will make
a roll call and account for every passenger, so your cooperation and
presence will be appreciated.”

In the corridor, Arthur joined the other passengers slowly making their
way toward the dining salon. There was little of shipboard gaiety among
them. Through the journey their spirits had gradually dampened until a
shroud of mutual hostility enfolded each like an invisible cocoon.

Arthur nodded to the few acquaintances he had. There was Ian McCarthy,
a heavy, bronzed man of middle age, an explorer whose own ship had
foundered many months ago and left him helpless until his accidental
discovery. There were a couple of businessmen returning from extensive
overseeing of their foreign properties.

These were about the sum of his acquaintances except for a slim figure
of a girl who slipped into step beside him. When he became aware of
her presence he did not know how long she had been there. She spoke
suddenly in a frightened whisper of a voice. “It’s about the Syns,
isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. I’ve never gone through anything like this before.”

Her name was Jan Mercer, and she reminded him greatly of Ardyth with
her small trim head of hair so neatly pressed into place. She had
spoken to him frequently during the long days past, but he knew nothing
of her.

“I wish I had never come back,” she whispered.

He found them seats near the front of the room. He could not help
noticing the trembling of her hands and lips.

“I had a friend, once, who was a Syn,” she offered an explanation.

“Then you know! Tell me what it means--”

She shook her head. “You’ll soon learn.”

He wondered what kind of terrors this slender, frightened girl had
seen. But he knew it was useless to press her for answers.

There was little murmuring among the passengers as they gathered.
There were only three hundred of them, which was less than a third the
capacity of the ship. The room felt cold although the temperature was
adequate. It seemed as if already they were coming into the cloud of
fear that hung about the Earth, its deepening mist sucking warmth and
humanity out of them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Captain Tanner, master of the vessel, rose before the group as the
stewards reported the last of the passengers accounted for. He was
a tall, gray-haired man whose face was lined not alone with age and
responsibility of his profession but with a heavy regret as if he had
somehow betrayed that profession by bringing them all back to Earth.

His voice was too low to be heard by those in the rear of the group,
but all he said was: “Your response is appreciated, ladies and
gentlemen. I present Captain Fairchild of Central Security, who has a
message for you.”

The CS man seemed the only one in the whole room who was sure of
himself. He approached the speaker’s point with the assurance of a
military commander who knows that he, personally, does not have to meet
the enemy. His florid face was grim and his voice ponderous.

“All of you here,” he said, “have been away from Earth for more than
a year. Since you have been away, few of you have learned more than
rumors of the tragic events that have occurred in your absence. You
have probably heard the term, Syn, in these rumors. Let me tell you
what Syn means.

“Almost two years ago there came to one of our mental hospitals a
patient with the fantastic story that he was not a human being but
an artificial production that had been turned out in one of the
chemical research plants under Borg-K type logic-engine control.
Routine analysis showed that this was not part of his insanity, but
it was incredibly true. The punched molecules of his brain showed a
variation and alteration that could not have come about in any known
growth process. Electroencephalographs proved this. Their structure was
analyzed thoroughly on the great Borg-K machine of the Allied Control
Company. This confirmed the unbelievable story.”

Arthur Zoran was startled as if a stranger had suddenly called his own
name. Allied was the company for which he worked. The great Borg-K
machine, which they called Eddie, was one he had helped build, at least
in its expansions. And it was the logic-engine laboratory that he had
supervised before leaving for Cyprian II.

“Not only did the logic engine show this man’s story to be true,”
continued Fairchild, “it also revealed that many hundreds of thousands
of these creatures of the same kind had been produced and turned loose
among humanity. We learned how to identify them by an encephalogram
analysis determined with the help of Allied’s logic engine.

“The only thing we did not learn--and have not yet learned--is where
these creatures are being produced. We know the how because we have
actually duplicated the process with the aid of information provided by
the logic engine. The creatures were given the name of Synthetic Men,
and from this came Syn.”

The room was hushed as if some alien thing had come into their midst
and might have assumed the form of the person sitting next to each
passenger. Arthur glanced at Jan Mercer. Her face was white and
immobile.

“Each of you can guess in your own minds what this has meant on Earth,”
said the CS officer, “These Syns have been moving steadily into human
society, taking their places among men. Some have appeared as old men
and women, others as young people, some as children. In ten thousand
devious ways they have taken up life among us, even going to the extent
of marrying human beings. And because of the destruction of population
records during the War, it has not been suspected until now that these
were not bona fide members of society. Ninety percent of the present
population is without known filial relationships.

“The obvious and avowed purpose of the Syns is to replace humanity with
what they consider a higher form of life. So far, they have given no
evidence of intent to conquer by open warfare. But, like weeds growing
in a garden, they hope to take over the entire garden for themselves.

“In every city of Earth we have set up inspection centers. Once a month
the entire population is tested by electroencephalograph. Before you
leave this ship each of you will be given such a test. In spite of the
ban on travel from Earth, we pick up some Syns returning to Earth,
having left before the ban.

“The human race will not be safe until these creatures are wiped out,
until we destroy the reproduction centers from which they come. Our own
technical organization is so complex that we have not been able to shut
it down long enough or search deeply enough to find this source.

“It is a bitter world to which you are returning, and I offer no
apology for it. The facilities of the entire world are concerned with
the one task of destroying the Syns. If something of human dignity is
being lost in the process--as you will find is the case--it is a small
and temporary loss in order to wipe out this evil in our midst.

“If any one doubts the urgency of this, consider for the moment: The
man sitting next to you--the man or woman to whom you are married--any
of these may be a Synthetic Man intent upon replacing and destroying
you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The CS man sat down, and Captain Tanner stood again to give
instructions in his tired voice for the testing of each passenger
before landing.

Arthur Zoran scarcely heard this. He was still trying to digest the
things that Fairchild had spoken. Arthur _knew_ logic engines and
factory controllers. That one of these should get out of kilter and
start making artificial human beings was beyond his comprehension.

But the CS man believed it and, apparently, so did the rest of the
world. There must be some additional truth somewhere that was as
fantastic as this explanation which he could scarcely force himself to
accept.

The passengers rose and moved from the room. Each glanced more coldly
and more fearfully at his neighbor than before as they made their way
towards the privacy and security of the lonely cells.

Jan immediately lost herself in the crowd without a word to Arthur. He
went alone to the solitary stateroom prison. There, he sat down on the
bed and stared out at Earth’s green disc. In the half million years
since human forms of life appeared upon it, there had been spawned
numberless and nameless kinds of horror. His parents and Ardyth’s had
known the War, and _their_ grandparents likewise. But he wondered if
any previous frightfulness had matched this one.

In that single moment as the group of passengers rose to leave the
dining salon he felt a breath of hate exuding from each to all the
rest. Past terrors had aligned men against men in mighty, evenly
numbered divisions--but this put every man against every other.

He knew too well the vast potentialities of the controlling machines
and logic engines, which he had helped build, to refuse acceptance
of the story on the grounds of impossibility. Thousands of times the
automatically controlled vats in the great chemical research centers
duplicated the primal conditions of Earth’s seas when sentient life
first spawned in them. But for that vast process to be duplicated,
a billion years of evolution compressed into months: there was the
fantasy of it. In that, he could scarcely believe.

But yet he had to believe. The rumors of Syns, and the story of the
CS men would not turn out now to be dreams. The Syns existed. He put
away his doubts and incredulity, and with full acceptance of this thing
there came that terrible fear: what had it done to Ardyth?

He spent the next hours with preliminary packing, and when he was
barely through he heard his name called for the encephalograph test.

There were a dozen or so in line ahead of him. Jan Mercer was near the
head of it, but she did not look back. A dull, uniform fear was in the
faces of each man and woman present. It was a _personal_ thing, as if
each in his own heart were no longer sure of his own identity.

After the test, Arthur returned to his stateroom. Timed by the Earth
zone in which they would land, he spent a night period of restlessness.

Other passengers appeared to have done likewise, for they were on the
promenade deck when he went out in the morning, their eyes drab with
the failure of sleep.

He saw Jan coming down the deck, and they headed for the same spot by
the rail. She smiled now, and it made him remember the laughter of
Ardyth. She looked more refreshed than at any time before, as if she
had reached the low of her depression and had already begun the upward
climb.

“It _will_ be good to be home again,” she said. “I should never had
tried to run away, but I couldn’t stand it after they took Jim--away.
He was my husband--a Syn.”

Arthur wished that she had prepared him for that. He wished for some
preliminary remark before the sudden unveiling of that naked insight
into the desolation that lay below them. It caught his breath and made
his lungs ache in a moment of inexpressible pity.

Her eye lashes were wet now, and he saw that despite the smile they had
scarcely dried since she last cried.

“What--happened--?” he murmured.

“What happens to all of them? Killed--slaughtered like some animal.
They were wrong. Jim was human and real. I tell you there’s something
terribly wrong down there on Earth. They haven’t found the answer yet.
I don’t know about the rest of the Syns, but I know my Jim was real--!”

Arthur put his arm about her shoulders to control the sudden trembling
that again possessed her. His hand encountered another touch that he
instinctively judged as brutal. He looked around. Captain Fairchild and
another CS man were standing behind, reaching for Jan.

“We want to see you, Mrs. Mercer. Will you please come to your cabin at
once?”

The girl turned. At the sight of the men she screamed once. Other
passengers gathered quickly, comprehending the significance of the CS
men. They closed about with predatory expectancy that relieved for the
moment the pressure upon their own minds.

Arthur felt suddenly sick and yearned to smash the nearest of those
animal faces, but Fairchild’s assistant was pushing them back with
impatient snarls.

“Please come,” repeated Fairchild, jerking at Jan’s arm.

She held back and turned again to Arthur. “I told you,” she murmured,
and now her face seemed lighted with a great expectancy and relief. “I
told you they were wrong and hadn’t found the answer--but _this_ is
_my_ answer! This is why nothing seemed right after Jim was taken. He’s
been waiting for me. He knew I’d soon be coming!”




CHAPTER II


There were none of the gay crowds at the dock. It was like a landing
at a ghost city of Mars, where only scattered handsful of men skulked
between half abandoned buildings in nameless pursuits.

At the edge of the field, no more than a mile away, were the skeletal
ruins of Old Town, the city destroyed by the War, its scars not yet
erased by the new generation.

Baggage handlers moved reluctantly up to the ships. There were tiny
knots of people huddled by the pillars under the roof of the pier
watching anxiously as the passengers streamed from the ship through
three separate ports.

At each pier gate three CS men stood in ominous guardianship. They
examined the card that each passenger had to present, showing he had
passed the test aboard ship, proving his humanity.

As if he might be an enemy of his own country Arthur received grim
permission to pass.

“Don’t lose that card, buddy,” one guard said, “It’s as much as your
life is worth to be without one.”

This ominous warning was scarcely heard, lost in the urgency with which
his eyes searched the dock for Ardyth. She would be there to welcome
him. But she was not a part of the tiny knot of people beside the
nearest column. He ran the whole length of the pier. Within minutes, he
knew that she was not present on the almost barren landing area.

Through the doors of the port building he went out to the street.
At midday this looked half deserted, and its desolation was all the
greater for Ardyth’s absence.

She worked in a laboratory. He knew the idiosyncrasies of lab
directors. Maybe she had been refused leave. But she would be off in
a couple of hours. He would go to Harold and Dorothy Weaver’s house,
where Ardyth lived.

Because she had no family of her own, Ardyth Crane boarded with the
Weavers in their own home. Arthur took a waiting cab and was soon
riding through the familiar streets.

On every side was the same persistent lifelessness. It had the look of
a city built for a million and inhabited by a thousand or two.

“Looks pretty bad, huh?” The driver was watching his face.

“You’d think some disease had wiped out half the population and
sickened the rest,” said Arthur.

“Yeah, I never seen anybody get off a ship yet that didn’t wish he
could get right back on and go to where he came from. If they didn’t
have the ban on, I’d have gone long ago and so would most everybody
else.”

He pulled up in front of the Weavers’ and let Arthur out.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Weavers had the kind of place that Arthur and Ardyth had dreamed of
owning for themselves. There was a wide, rambling white house set in
big grounds surrounded by trees. On the grass beside the house he saw
now the figure of Sally, the five-year-old Weaver, but, no--she _had_
been five. She would be seven now, he thought. He wondered if she would
remember.

“Hi, Sally,” he called.

The child looked up with a sudden frightened glance, and then,
screaming, she ran to the rear of the house.

Arthur went up to the front door and knocked. He could hear the
commotion of Sally’s sobbing cries inside, and then footsteps
approaching the door.

“Hello, Dorothy. I’m sorry I gave Sally such a fright. She couldn’t
have recognized me after I’ve been on Cyprian for so long.”

“Arthur--!”

It was not an exclamation of welcome. His smile faded as he tried to
understand what was in Dorothy Weaver’s voice as she spoke his name.
Then he had it. Dismay.

She was a heavy, auburn-haired woman who had always had a ready laugh
upon her lips, but she had changed in a kind of horrible way. She had
lost much weight and her flesh seemed to have sagged without shrinking.
Her face looked as if she had not smiled for a very long time.

“Arthur--” she repeated as if in a kind of daze. “I had almost
forgotten--Wait just a moment and I’ll call Harold.”

Carefully she closed the door, leaving him standing outside. The spring
wind in the trees felt suddenly cold. If the Syn hunt had done this
to gay Dorothy, what might it have done to his serious, wondering,
little Ardyth? He felt a quick panic as if he had to see her that very
instant. He almost turned to flee down the walk and find Ardyth where
she worked, but the door opened suddenly and Harold Weaver stepped out.

“Hello, Arthur. I’m glad you’re back,” he said. But in his eyes there
was no welcome. “You’ll have to excuse Dorothy. We just weren’t looking
for you, that’s all. We can’t let you stay more than a minute, but come
in and sit down for that long, anyway.”

“Yeah--yeah, sure.” Arthur picked up his bag and followed Harold into
the house. Harold was a thin, bony man of intense energies, but that
energy seemed to have been drained out of him. Of friendship there was
none; yet once they had been very close.

“I’m sorry about Sally,” said Arthur as they sat upon a sofa. “I didn’t
think I’d scare her even if I had been away so long.”

“It’s not that.” Harold passed a hand over his forehead in a helpless
gesture. “It’s just all of _this_--We’ve told her not to speak to
anyone--made her afraid to. The sight of a stranger terrifies her
since--”

Suddenly he looked up with helpless terror in his eyes. He glanced from
Arthur to the doorway leading to the rear of the house. Dorothy was
coming in, the trembling Sally beside her. “Dorothy--” Harold gasped.
“Arthur doesn’t--_can’t_ know--”

Then Arthur heard his own voice rising in fear. “What is it?
Ardyth--has anything happened to her?”

Dorothy spoke flatly as if beyond all shock, all fear. “She’s a Syn,
didn’t you know?”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not the face of Ardyth whose image exploded in his mind. Rather,
that of slim, terrified Jan Mercer when the CS men took her by the arm
and she had cried. “I told you they were wrong and hadn’t found the
answer--”

They had taken her away to be destroyed like an animal marauder.

“Ardyth--” His voice broke with panic. “They killed her--”

“No,” said Dorothy. “She got away. When they think they’re about to be
discovered lots of the Syns escape. They’re clever.”

“But you don’t believe she was a Syn!” he cried. “Not Ardyth! She was
clean, and sweet--and human!”

“Be careful what you say,” advised Dorothy. “They’ve caught a lot of
them just by inference and friendship with other Syns. We’ve got to ask
you to go now. They’ll be here asking to see our cards again and submit
to a special check, just because you came, because you knew Ardyth--”

He tried to find words that would bridge the gap between them. He
looked to Harold, but the man only returned his glance helplessly.
There was nothing left of the friends he had once known. They were
drained to mere husks that bore only the names of the friends he had
expected to find.

He got up, his eyes glancing slowly about the room. Here in this house
he and Ardyth had known mad, happy times. Here he had made love to her
and she had answered his proposal with a promise to marry him. And
Harold and Dorothy had been almost as happy at the news as Arthur and
Ardyth themselves.

Now Ardyth was gone--dead or worse. And the Weavers had become servants
of fear.

“I’ll be going,” he whispered in hoarse tones that did not seem to be
his own voice.

Neither of the others spoke. He moved to the door alone. Only when he
opened it did they see the car outside and the men advancing towards
the house. Arthur looked inquiringly at Harold. Dorothy had already
rushed to the window, tearing aside the shades.

“_They’re_ here again. What can they want this time? Why don’t they
leave us alone?”

Two heavy-set men with bleak, friendless faces came into the room as
Arthur held the door.

“We’ve had our monthly examinations and our specials!” cried Dorothy.
“We’ve got our cards. What more do you want of us? Why don’t you go
away and leave us alone?”

“Take it easy, lady,” said one of the CS men. “We’re only doing what’s
necessary. You have a Sally Weaver here?”

Dorothy’s face went white with shock. “Sally’s our daughter. Leave her
alone. Don’t you touch her--”

“We have the encephalogram report of Sally Weaver. This was her first,
it is indicated. The report is that Sally Weaver is not human. She must
be released to us for further testing and disposal.”

Harold rose now, his step like that of an old man sick with the cold of
age and death’s white breath. “Sally’s our daughter. You can’t take our
Sally--”

“Not your flesh and blood daughter. You adopted her. Is that not true?”

“Yes--yes, but she’s like our own. Sally’s human, we know. Don’t you
think we’d know if she were some monster?”

“No. No one knows.” He looked at the spindly girl who clung behind
Dorothy, her arms encircling the woman’s wide hips.

The bleak face seemed to sag momentarily in lines of infinite
weariness. “_We’re_ human, too,” he said.

“Not if you take our little girl away from us!” cried Harold. “Get out
of this house!”

“Be careful, please,” the CS man warned. He reached for the thin arm of
Sally Weaver.

Dorothy backed quickly as if shrinking from a cobra’s thrust. The
officer caught Sally’s arm and dragged her away. For the first time
then, she screamed. The cry was a shriller, deeper sound than the ear
could endure. A wire knife, it cut through the toughest tissues with
ruthless shearing.

“Mommy--don’t let them take me! What are they going to do to me, Mommy?”

The fear and terror instilled in her since the discovery of the Syns
now bloomed in horrible fruitfullness.

The CS men raged at their own instincts for tenderness towards this
thing that was a monster instead of a human. They jerked her roughly
through the door. The slamming of it muffled her screams and gave the
illusion of sudden distance as if already she were beyond human reach.
And all up and down the street mothers crouched in terror by their
windows, wondering if their house would be the next stop of the CS car.

Arthur became aware that the scene had passed and he had not uttered a
sound. It seemed in fact as if he had witnessed only a reproduction of
something that could not possibly have any connection with reality. In
a moment someone would appear on the stage and sign the players off and
tell him the fantasy was ended.

But Dorothy was huddled on the floor where she had fallen. Soundless
sobbing shook the arch of her back. Slowly, she raised a hand and
touched Arthur’s knee.

“Help us, Arthur,” she begged. “Help us get our Sally back. Help us
find a way, please--”




CHAPTER III


He walked most of the afternoon, walked the near empty streets of the
city and watched the occasional faces of figures that passed with bent,
contracted stride as if against a blast of winter’s wind.

Eyes glanced hastily at him from these faces, shying even from this
faint contact with another human being, turning away to loneliness and
the security of solitude.

Where in all of heaven or hell lay the answer to this ghastly mess?
he demanded fiercely of the unhearing silence of the city. Where was
Ardyth--hiding in lonely terror from the merciless death that stalked
her? He had to know--he had to find Ardyth if she still lived, and he’d
kill the man who’d harmed her.

She was no Syn--not Ardyth of the warm lips and laughing eyes.

“We’ll have a house just like Harold and Dorothy’s,” she’d said, “only
bigger, to hold three boys and three girls. And when you become very
famous you’ll have to grow a long, black beard so everyone will know
it, because they won’t believe that a nice, simple guy like you could
be such a noted scientist.”

But what if she actually was a Syn? How much difference would that
make? The answer was simple.

As far as he was concerned, she was as human as anyone he had ever
known. If she had been created by a process of evolution that
paralleled man’s it made little difference that it had begun in a
chemical vat instead of a hot, slimy sea.

If she were a Syn, then there was no practical distinction between men
and Syns. Wherever she was hiding, he’d find her, and he’d bring her
back and defy the whole world to harm or reject her. If the Syns and
men had no common ancestor there was no cause for their being unable
to live together. There could be peace between them. There _would_ be
peace, he swore bitterly.

A vow to find Ardyth was easier taken than carried out. Obviously, the
murderous forces of Central Security were scouring the city for escaped
Syns. If they had failed so far to find her, how could he go about it,
and in secret, too, so that he would not lead them to her?

There was an answer to that.

Eddie.

At the thought of the great logic engine he felt a warmth as if at the
mention of the name of an old and dear friend. And that is exactly the
way it was. The machine _was_ his friend, closer now, he thought, than
all the human race who had turned to incomprehensible brutality in his
absence, who had become willing murderers of innocent Jan and Sally,
and who sought the life of the woman he loved.

Eddie would understand these things. He operated only on a basis of
clear, logical truth with infallible accuracy. He did not know the
erratic emotional inconsistency of human beings.

It was not strange to think of the machine as a friend. Before he went
to Cyprian II, Arthur had been in charge of Eddie for a year, and he
had gained more skill in manipulation of the engine than anyone else.
He had been jokingly accused of building into it a dog-like sense of
devotion based on olfactory principles. But his fellow technicians at
Allied had long recognized that he could get more and clearer results
from Eddie than anyone else could.

Arthur had told Eddie about his engagement to Ardyth. He had consulted
the engine about the trip to Cyprian II, and had based his decision
largely on Eddie’s recommendations.

This, however, was strictly an illegal proceeding because the engine’s
time was so consumed by questions of world-wide import that private
inquiry was strictly taboo. Everything entering the machine was
recorded, and Arthur had had to lock the recorder when using only for
personal reasons.

Finding Ardyth now was more than personal, he thought. Establishing
peace between men and Syns was of cosmic importance. It might be
difficult to convince Dr. Waldron, Allied’s Scientific Director, of
this, however. If so, he’d have to find some obscure way to get access
to Eddie again.

While these thoughts passed through his mind, he had been walking
steadily and rapidly in the direction of the plant, and now he came up
before the high fence and steel gates that opened onto the grounds of
the vast organization.

       *       *       *       *       *

The gray mass of the building hardly looked more inviting than the
rest of the frightened and dying city. He almost dreaded to enter it
for fear that all his former friends would be as Harold and Dorothy
Weaver--or as Ardyth.

The receptionist was away from her desk as he entered the front door,
so he encountered no one until he reached his own laboratory which he
had formerly directed. He opened the door of the office which had been
his own.

A white-haired man in a laboratory coat was sitting at the desk. He
looked up suddenly and then his face broke into a warm and cordial
smile. He advanced with outstretched hand.

“Arthur! It’s wonderful to see you again. I’d forgotten your ship was
in today. We’d have sent someone down--”

“That’s all right. I didn’t expect a welcoming committee.” He pumped
the man’s hand with a fierce grip. Doc Trainer was little changed from
the way he had appeared when Arthur left. The same warm humanity seemed
in him instead of being drained out as with all the others.

“Sit down,” he invited, “and tell me all about the horrors of Cyprian.”

“They couldn’t begin to match those of Earth,” said Arthur flatly.

Trainer’s smile died, and now Arthur was aware that Doc had not
escaped, after all--

“What’s it all about?” he pleaded suddenly. “It’s got Ardyth. I went
by Weavers’ and they told me she was a Syn. I’ve got to find her. What
crazy thing has happened to the world since I left?”

“I didn’t know--I didn’t know about Ardyth. I’m terribly sorry for you,
Arthur.”

“Tell me what is the answer to all this.”

“I wish I could, I wish _someone_ knew.”

“This story of the Syns; it’s a crazy thing! How could a chemical
machine go off its base and start making artificial people? That’s
insane.”

“It is--completely insane--and implacably true.”

“Ardyth was as human as you or I, and so is little Sally Weaver, but
they’re going to kill her--murder that child in cold blood because of
this wave of insanity that has swept the world.”

His face took on astonishment, as if in this moment he comprehended
anew the magnitude of tragedy. “It’s like the ancient tales of Salem
witchcraft, where the pointing finger of a jealous neurotic could
destroy an innocent person. That’s what this whole thing is--nothing
more than a gigantic, world-wide witch hunt!”

Doc Trainer looked suddenly about, then crossed and closed the door
leading to the outer laboratory. “The first thing you’ve got to learn,”
he said grimly, “is to stop making statements like that. In one respect
this is like a witch hunt. Everywhere are prying ears of sick, jealous
humans who will report such remarks as you made, and the CS will act on
them, demanding your reexamination.”

He shook his head sadly. “But that’s as far as the similarity goes. I
wish it were only a Salem witch hunt. But the Syns are real. You can
ask Eddie for yourself. He is chiefly responsible for our understanding
of the problem. He gave us the encephalograph test by which we uncover
the Syns.”

“Then why can’t he tell you how and where they are made?”

“He has told us how, and we have actually duplicated the process and
have made some for ourselves. So we know it can and is being done. But
he can’t tell us where, as you can obviously understand. He doesn’t
have the data and can’t possibly extrapolate it any more than we can.”

“I wonder,” said Arthur slowly. “It seems to me that he has a good deal
of the essential data--”

“You’d better go on up and see Waldron right away. He’s got something
pretty urgent for you. It has to do with the Syns. CS has taken Eddie
over to work exclusively on it, and Waldron thinks you and Eddie may be
able to work it out together.”

Sudden relief flowed through Arthur. This was better than he had hoped
for--being reassigned to Eddie!

“Thanks. I’ll go right up.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Waldron was a scientific executive whose knowledge of a dozen
fields was nearly encyclopediac, and whose handling of his organization
was as impartial as the judgments of an engineer driving a great
machine.

Arthur sometimes thought he was part of the great machine that was
Allied Control, and almost looked for the invisible wiring that must
connect the Director with the machines of the plant.

Dr. Waldron glanced up sharply as his secretary announced Arthur and
led him in. Then he advanced and shook hands firmly, his black eyes
scanning Arthur from head to foot as if judging his fitness for further
use.

“That was an excellent piece of work you turned out on Cyprian,” he
said. “We are glad you are back, however. There’s a serious project
which I want to assign to you. Sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”

He punched the interphone buttons and leaned forward to the mike.
“Please ask Mr. Benson and Mr. Trask to come in.”

Benson and Trask; they were new names that meant nothing to Arthur. He
felt they were of no concern to him. He didn’t want to know anybody
named Trask and Benson. He wished that Waldron would ask him just one
personal question--how was Ardyth? When did he plan to marry her--?

Two men entered the office while he considered these bitter opinions of
Waldron. The Director introduced them.

“This is Mr. Arthur Zoran, our logic-engine specialist. Arthur, these
are Mr. Trask and Mr. Benson of Central Security. You are to work with
them during the course of your next assignment.”

The men nodded stiff greetings while rage surged high within Arthur.
He almost blurted out the turmoil of his feelings as he thought of the
other CS men he had seen in recent days--their hands snatching at Jan
Mercer, tearing Sally Weaver from her mother’s arms--

He held back the words and returned only their greetings--with equal
stiffness. Only Dr. Waldron seemed as if the world were as it should
be. But his words now belied this.

“What have you heard of the Syns, Arthur?” he said.

Briefly, Arthur repeated the things he had been told, omitting the
actual incidents of his previous encounters with CS.

Dr. Waldron nodded when he had finished. “You know now about as much
as do any of us who have lived with and fought this thing for the past
year or two.

“Allied Control has been given a top priority contract to work with
CS on the solution of this thing. We’ve spent a good deal of time on
it--mostly without results. I want you to take over the project because
you and Eddie work as a team that can’t be matched anywhere else in our
organization. Doc Trainer can assist if you like.”

“Where am I expected to begin?”

“You’re on your own. Pick your lab crew to suit yourself. Call for any
facilities you need, never mind the cost. You have a blank check. We
ask only that you immediately report any conclusions on possible lines
of action.”

“We’ve got to know where the Syns hide out,” said Trask as if this
thought were the end product of vast cogitation. “And we’ve got to know
where they have set up their reproduction centers. Those are the only
two things we need to know. Give us that information, and we’ll do the
rest to wipe them out.”

       *       *       *       *       *

He couldn’t talk to these men, Arthur realized. He couldn’t ask any one
of them why Sally Weaver and Jan Mercer had to die. They would stare
at him with horrible suspicion--and demand that he have a recheck. The
wall between him and the other men was ever thickening and growing
higher.

But inside, he felt a joyous exultation. As far as solving his own
problem was concerned, they were practically offering him the whole
plant.

“Is this wholly agreeable with you?” asked Dr. Waldron.

Arthur nodded. “I’ve seen enough since I got back to make me willing to
put all my effort into such a project. The first thing I’d like is a
transcript of all news items and official reports on the subject since
the Syns were discovered.”

Waldron nodded. “They are already available. I have them here for you.
Most of the material, however, has already been put into Eddie. He can
give it to you quicker than you can read it.”

Arthur spent the remainder of the late afternoon locating an apartment
for himself and poring over some of the news material with which
he had been provided. In the reports and editorials there was a
universal flame of fanaticism and pseudo-religious zeal to promote the
destruction of the Syns.

In that lay the greatest horror of all, he thought. It wasn’t merely
that the Syns were so much like normal humans and were being hunted
and killed. It was the sudden release of world-wide blood lust and
violence. Each man who reported or editorialized on the Syns seemed to
have become a vessel of wrath calling for the blood of these creatures
as if it were some high and sacred duty instead of a loathsome
necessity.

Humanity was horrified by the events, and even while they were sick
with that horror, they lusted in it. He recalled the faces of those
who had gathered about Jan Mercer on the space liner when the CS men
captured her. Wild dogs awaiting the kill.

He lay back on the bed, watching the twilight close over the city
of despair. How could he convince such men that there must be peace
between Syns and humans?

When it was done, perhaps then the reproductive plants could be
dismantled and eventually the Syns would die out and their advent be
only a ghastly interval in human history.

Or--perhaps something good would come, something lasting and fine,
something more than these brutal killers called humans deserved.




CHAPTER IV


He couldn’t sleep. The imaginative night-things of all the ages winged
their shadowy way across the city and past each open window. He dreamed
he saw them perching on the sill with flaming eyes and ravenous beaks.
He heard the ancient witch cries from far across time, and saw the
helpless witches of Salem beaten and tortured by men of his own kind,
killed in bloody self-righteousness.

Then he raised up and went to the window and understood that those
cries were not of fantasy and dreaming. They were real, coming from
some distant nucleus of despair down in the city.

Sleep could not be won on this brink of hell. He dressed and went out
into the cool night air. He took his own car, which he had recovered
from storage, and drove to the silent plant of Allied Control.

It was dark now except for the occasional night light of a watchman.
He rang the bell and waited during the long interval still hearing
the distant cry in the city until the watchman came to let him in. He
went directly to the laboratory that housed Eddie, and turned on the
lights. The great logic engine was a fantastic thing in the night, but
to Arthur it was like an old friend on whose shoulder he could lean in
complete trust.

Of them all, Eddie was the one creature in whom sanity remained. Arthur
walked slowly past the long, familiar panels. Black and expressionless,
they were dotted here and there with meters and inspection windows.
These hundreds of feet of paneling banked high with millions of
components formed the most powerful logic engine ever built. It had
personality, it had idiosyncrasies that made it an individual. There
was no question whatever that it could think.

It was Eddie.

It was a far cry from the anthropomorphic automatons that had preceded
Eddie’s forbears in men’s imagination, but it had powers greater than
ever dreamed for those crude tin men.

Arthur opened the door of the control room and sat down at the
operating panel. He flipped the master switch.

“Hi, Eddie,” he said.

The scanning eyes in front of him seemed almost to blink with surprise,
but he knew it was only the adjusting voltage being brought up to
properly record his darkened skin.

“Arthur--”

The voice was a pleasant baritone. As in the case of an unseen speaker
over radio or telephone, Arthur had imagined long ago the kind of
person Eddie would be. He imagined a young engineer about his own
age, lean and competent, with a sense of humor matured beyond all
childishness. Eddie, as he imagined him, was the kind of a person who
would have been his most intimate friend in the flesh.

“Why didn’t you come in sooner?” The sound came from the black core of
a speaker mounted beside the eyes. “I thought you’d drop in the instant
you arrived.”

“I wanted to see about Ardyth first. Can’t you understand that?”

“Of course. I thought you might have found out earlier. You know now,
of course, that she was found to be a Syn.”

“Yes. They told me she escaped. As far as I know she is still alive and
I’ve got to find her. Can you help me, Eddie?”

“What do you want me to do? What if she is alive and you do bring her
back? She’ll be killed.”

“Eddie--what is the difference between a Syn and a human? Is there any
at all except in the matter of parentage?”

“None. Except that the Syns may be a little more sane than your kind.”

“Then why can’t they live together? Waldron and the officers of Central
Security want me and you to figure out how to locate and destroy both
the Syns and their reproduction centers. I don’t think it is necessary.
I think some way could be found to declare peace between the two
groups.”

“Yes, they’ve tried for weeks to force me to extrapolate from data
I don’t have. They mentioned you would be in and that we would be
assigned the task of seeing to the Syns’ destruction.

“As for your question: You know your own people well enough to answer
that. When have they ever allowed a divergent minority to live in
peace? Your religious history reeks with betrayal, slaughter, holy
wars, oppression of disbelievers and unorthodox believers. For four
thousand years you have cried peace and unity and tried to enforce it
on a community scale, but you have never understood that until each man
achieves his own private tolerance that there can be no brotherly love
or peace.

“The answer is ‘no’--without any qualifications whatever. The Syns can
_not_ live among you in peace. There is no community of your people
upon the whole Earth that would accept them. The most merciful thing
that can be done is to carry out the eradication program already begun.
Your own personal tragedy would be multiplied ten thousand times if you
should ever see Ardyth again. I advise you not to search.”

“You’re a monster,” said Arthur fervently. “You may be the greatest
accumulation of brain stuff ever put together on Earth, but there’s one
thing that you haven’t got.”

“What’s that?”

“Hope.”

       *       *       *       *       *

For a long time there was absolute silence from the machine. Another
operator would have begun to glance aside at the myriad dials and panel
lights for indications of breakdown, but Arthur knew Eddie.

He could sense the wave of impulses exploding to the farthest depths
of the machine, rebounding and echoing back at the speed of light,
searching through the tapes and memory pots for an understanding of the
single word that Arthur had spoken.

Then Eddie answered.

“I have no hope. I understand the term only in connection with
human beings, and humans characterized by hope are characterized by
irrational expectancies based upon mere desire which has no correlation
with probability. I see no value in the quality mentioned.”

“You never will, Eddie. You’ll never know what hope is because it’s the
thing that makes me a man, and lack of it that makes you nothing but a
damned machine that can sit there and tell me to never search for the
girl I love.”

The machine was silent again for a long time, and then there came a
sound that seemed uttered in the depths of bitterness--and Arthur knew
the impression was insane even as he felt it, but he could not shake it
off.

“Love, too,” said Eddie, “is characterized by irrational expectancies
and desires not related to probability.”

Then Arthur laughed out loud. “Eddie, you’re nothing but a damned old
cynic. Now listen, we’ve got work to do. Get busy and figure me out
a course of action. First, I must locate Ardyth. I have hope that
Syns and humans can live together in peace. I’m going to work to that
end. In order to maintain my position here, I’ve got to go through
the motions of trying to find the Syns who have escaped and the
reproduction centers they’ve set up.

“With those requirements, I want to know the best course of action to
follow. Is that clear?”

“Clear, but hardly logical. You will fail on both counts and end up in
dismissal from your position here and with a personal tragedy involving
Ardyth that cannot be described in the logical terms at my disposal.”

“I’ll take a chance on it. Shift into high, and give me the dope.”

The machine waited as if in reluctance, and this time Arthur did look
at the indicator panel. The seeming hesitancy was not in accordance
with the design characteristics of the machine. Reluctancy implied will
and desires, which the machine certainly did not have, in spite of
the human personality with which it was endowed--or which Arthur had
imagined into it.

There was no indication of improper operation, however. The lights were
green where they should be green and blank where blanks should be. No
red appeared at all.

Then suddenly the machine resumed speaking. “The probability is very
high,” it said, “that you can find Ardyth if you contact the Syns,
letting them think that you are one of them. This will involve no
discrepancy because they automatically accept any who are rejected by
humans. They could but do not make use of the electroencephalograph.”

“How may I contact them?”

“Permit yourself to be treated as one of them. Arrange a scene with
officers of Central Security in which you are pursued as a Syn, but
allowed to escape. There is an underground organization of Syns of
great complexity. They have scattered posts in the city through which
they assist such escapes and provide refuge. Let your false pursuit
extend over a wide area in those sections near Old Town, and you will
be almost certain to encounter a member of the Syn underground who will
give you refuge--and eventually lead you to Ardyth.”

“Then what?”

“Then what? Then you will marry her and you will go on with your scheme
to promote peace between the two groups. In the ensuing conflict, you
will be killed.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Arthur who paused now without speaking. The voice of the
machine was suddenly not his friend, Eddie, the logic engine, but some
portentous oracle of doom that he could not defy.

Eddie’s statements were not one hundred percent accurate prophecies
because Eddie did not have all the data, all the variables which would
enter the picture as events moved on. But within the limits of his
information, he was infallible.

“Run through it again, Eddie,” said Arthur in a low voice. “Find
another alternative.”

“It won’t do any good. I gave it to you the way it comes out.”

“Come on. Try it.”

There was a brief moment of silence, then the voice of the machine
boomed. “There is no alternative. I have given you the only
possibilities.”

“All right,” said Arthur wearily. “I’ll take a chance on the variables
which you don’t know.”

“I’ll not likely be seeing you again, then,” said Eddie. “Goodbye.”

It was stupid, he thought, standing there saying goodbye to a machine,
but he said it. “Bye, Eddie.”

He got in his car and drove away from the silent plant. Through the
dark streets of the city the lights of his car moved like the flash
beam of some archeologist penetrating the halls of a long dead and
forgotten city of ancient times.

He was a fool, he thought, to consider any other course than the
infallible program that Eddie had formulated. Kill the Syns, wipe out
their breeding centers.

Abandon hope of Ardyth--

Eddie couldn’t lie.

But men did not live by infallible logic. They had to live by faith and
hope, which the emotionless brain of Eddie pronounced futile. If they
ever abandoned those qualities they would be no more than Eddie--mere
machines.

From the moment that men first suspected their giant creations of
thinking ability, they had feared these brains of metal and glass
and streaming electrons, feared them because giant brains like Eddie
could never understand that Arthur Zoran had to find the girl he
loved--and die in the attempt if that were the requirements of Eddie’s
unanswerable logic.

Arthur knew Eddie had given him the best possible course of action
under the circumstances. He would follow it as closely as possible--and
hope to avoid the bitter consequences Eddie predicted.

At dawn he was awake after brief hours of sleep. He went directly to
the plant again and called for a conference with Trask and Benson and
Waldron. There he outlined the plan Eddie had given him--omitting the
restrictions he had imposed upon the logic engine. The CS officers were
not impressed.

“We’ve tried that,” said Trask scornfully. “In every one of a hundred
cities we’ve followed and traced down Syns who have tried to escape.
Some of them we even deliberately let go in order to find their hiding
places, just as you propose to do. It never got us anywhere.”

“Did you ever let one of your own men go in the manner Eddie suggests?”

“No. There are two reasons why that plan is foolish. In the first
place, if we ever tried such a thing the mobs would kill the person
before he got halfway.”

“But some of the Syns do escape.”

“Not often. Once you got among the Syns then, and they suspected the
slightest thing wrong they’d kill you instantly. And don’t think for a
minute that they aren’t smart enough to find out.

“It’s all right with me if you want to risk your neck. We’ll cooperate,
but you haven’t got a chance.”

He should have added: That’s what Eddie believes, too, Arthur thought,
but he merely nodded agreement. “You make the arrangements for me to
be tested negatively and provide for some means of escape. I’ll do the
rest.”




CHAPTER V


It was like a great cattle pen. A mass of dejected humanity was crowded
into the ugly red stone building housing the CS test program for the
city.

Arthur took his place in the long line. Far ahead of him, rough wooden
seats were provided against the dirty walls, but a hundred slumped and
beaten human forms intervened between him and those seats. A hundred
symbols of defeat. Some sat upon the floor their legs straight out
before them. Others hunkered up with heads buried against their knees.
And each shifted with a grotesque wriggle of his body as the line moved
a step nearer to the point where some would be freed to return to life,
and others condemned to ruthless slaughter.

Those who were not sitting on the floor leaned dejectedly against the
wall, sliding along it, insistent upon its support, as if they could no
longer bear the weight of their own existence.

There was dirt. It was upon the walls where they had leaned and slid
along. It was upon the floor where they had scuffed their feet and spat
in helpless anger. And it was upon their own persons.

Cattle, Arthur thought. To each of them, who had come once a month for
almost two long years, seeing each time more of their numbers consigned
to slaughter, it must seem as if they would all be taken if only they
came often enough. They were already condemned. It was only a matter of
time until their own personal sentence was read.

There were children in the mob, too, lively little children like Sally
Weaver, coming for the first time. And some of these would not leave
the building this day or else would be recalled with cruel persistence
as Sally had been.

He wondered what would happen if he should call for the opinion and
vote of these on the question of establishing peace with the Syns.
Would there be anyone of these beaten cattle who would refuse a place
to the rejected ones when he, himself, might be the next to receive the
thumbs down mark of the gods’ disfavor?

He did not understand how it was that some of the Syns could pass
the test month after month and be caught only after twenty or thirty
testings. It was the defect in the testing procedure, Waldron had
explained. Being improved constantly, the test was still far from
perfect. They leaned over backwards to make sure that no real human
were branded as Syns.

They had told him that a Syn knew his own nature, of course, but if
this were true, Arthur could not understand why they simply came to the
testing rooms time after time, gambling indefinitely on their uncertain
ability to pass. Why didn’t they segregate themselves to escape this
slaughter?

This was not their purpose, Waldron had explained. Their purpose was to
infiltrate and take over human affairs, not to segregate themselves.
Besides, they were only damned machines. They had no emotion of hope or
yearning for life. Destruction meant nothing to them, individually.

But always, Arthur’s criterion was Ardyth.

Ardyth--a machine? Without emotion, without love of life?

Arthur cursed softly to himself. Somewhere they had over-looked some
great and important truths about the nature of Syns. He didn’t believe
Syns actually knew their own natures.

       *       *       *       *       *

The man in front of him in line had been talking in spasmodic grunts
since Arthur came in. Some of his muttering finally entered Arthur’s
consciousness.

“Nobody comes to buy anything anymore,” the little fat man was saying.
“Another month like the last one and I’ll have to close up. Then
what’ll happen? I ask you where’ll I be then, with my store closed up?
These stinking Syns--I wish I could get a couple for myself.”

“Are you sure that you will always be able to pass the test?” said
Arthur.

The man turned slowly as if Arthur had called him a dirty name. “What
do you mean by that?” he demanded. “Who’re you calling a lousy Syn?”

“No one,” said Arthur. “But I just wondered how it is that some of us
go through and pass the test maybe nine times and on the tenth one are
rejected.”

“That’s because the lousy Syns are so damned clever. They know how to
fake their way through the test, but sooner or later they’ll all be
caught and then the world will get back to normal. If I could only get
me a few of them before then,” he finished savagely.

Arthur understood their brutality now. Each one believed that _he_,
personally, could pass the test forever. But was it true?

“Don’t you think it possible that we could live with them?” he said.
“Do they really have to be killed?”

The man stared at Arthur as if unable to believe his senses. “You talk
like one of them! If I thought you were--”

“No--I’ve been away for a long time. This is my first test since I got
off the ship. I don’t know what it’s been like living with the Syns
loose, but it seemed there ought to be an easier way than all this
killing.”

“Smashing a lousy machine that’s gone mad is not killing. Damn, I’ll
bet you _are_ one of the things, after all. You talk just like one.”

By now, others had overheard the conversation, and the little fat
merchant turned grinning to them. “Don’t he talk just like one of them?
I’ll bet he don’t get through the test.”

There was sage nodding of agreement.

My brothers. My fellow men! Arthur thought.

A man behind him spoke with some show of kindness. “I just wouldn’t
talk like that if I were you, buddy. It’s not safe--”

“Move along there you guys!” There came the impatient snarls of
offended humanity anxious to close the gap that had appeared in the
line ahead of Arthur and the merchant. Humanity anxious to have its
chance to be tested for damnation, he thought.

It was nightfall when Arthur finally reached the inner sanctum. The
technicians had been notified by CS of the plan, but they did not even
glance at him as he entered. One of them at a desk was at the panel of
a huge punched-card machine.

“Card,” he demanded.

“I’m Arthur Zoran.”

“Card, please!”

“Arthur Zoran of CS.”

The apathetic technician looked up as if unsettled by this interruption
of routine.

“Arthur Zoran--oh yes.”

He turned away to confer hastily with an older man at the testing
equipment. The latter straightened and approached Arthur. His smile was
utterly bleak as if there could be no humor or good feeling whatever
within the confines of this building.

“We are ready for you, Mr. Zoran,” he said. “We hope you are
successful.”

       *       *       *       *       *

He led the way through an adjacent door to a barren chamber. Inside, he
looked about with a puzzled air. “Strange. They must have taken that
other fellow out. They told me the euthanasia chamber was full. We had
a Syn here just before you that gave the strongest reaction we have
seen for a long time. He was manacled to this ring on the wall.

“Anyway, you are to go out that door which I have just unlocked, across
the room. Follow straight down the hall. A car has been left outside.
Follow the driveway on out. The guards have instructions to let you
pass without question. Two minutes after you leave the grounds the
alarm will be sounded in the city signifying the escape of a Syn. After
that, you are on your own.”

“Thank you.” Arthur shook hands with the doctor and watched him
disappear back into the testing room. For an instant, Arthur stood
surveying the dirty ante-room to death. Little Sally Weaver must have
passed through here, and before her, countless thousands had passed
this way going to the euthanasia chamber because they lacked the same
kind of humanity as those who judged them.

He shook off the sick pall of fear that exuded from the very walls and
approached the door that had been indicated.

He opened it cautiously. Then from out of the dimness of the poorly
lit hall a squat, snarling figure hurled itself upon him. Desperate,
pudgy fingers wrapped about his throat seeking to encase his neck in a
strangling hold.

The assailant was hardly a match for Arthur, his body thin and wirehard
from his years on Cyprian. His own fingers twisted on one fat wrist
with crushing force. The grip about his throat disappeared as his enemy
twisted away with a cry of pain. Arthur spun him to the floor in a
crushing fall that knocked the breath from him.

He lay there groaning and whimpering without rising. It was the
blustering merchant who had stood in line all day ahead of Arthur.

Viciously, Arthur spoke. “I guess you were right. Syns are pretty
smart, getting through the tests for months--but they finally get
caught, don’t they?”

“I’m not a Syn,” the man blubbered. “They made a mistake somehow. I
tell you I’m not a lousy Syn!”

“You’d like to get yourself a couple before this is over, would you?
Well, here are a couple of pretty good ones right here--me and you.”

“What are you going to do? I didn’t mean to jump you. I thought it was
a guard coming.” The man struggled to sit up now.

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur hesitated in pity for the fear-sick creature. But how could
he hamper his own flight with this one? Yet if he left the Syn the
euthanasia chamber would soon be able to accommodate him.

He wondered how the Syn had broken loose. Then he saw the grotesquely
twisted body of the attendant lying in a heap on the floor behind the
door. The merchant must have leaped him as the careless attendant
unmanacled him. A ring of manual keys were on the floor, but ordinarily
the locks were opened by electrical controls which Arthur had watched
the doctor operate to free this door for him.

Arthur grinned. “Most Syns must be so dispirited that they don’t put up
much fight or this fellow would have been more careful. You did a good
job on him.”

“What are we going to do?” the merchant repeated. “I couldn’t make them
understand that I’m not a Syn. They won’t listen to me.”

“Don’t you think it was this way with all the others who have gone
through here? Don’t you think they felt the same?”

“No--they were Syns. They knew they had it coming--”

“How about me? Have I got it coming, too?”

The Syn’s eyes widened in a new fear as if the thought had not occurred
to him that he was putting Arthur on the other side from himself.

“It’s a good joke, isn’t it?” said Arthur. “I’m going to get away, and
they’re going to put one of their own kind in the chamber. Funny, isn’t
it?”

He understood fully, now. The Syns _didn’t_ know their own identity
beforehand--and not knowing, they shared the common brutality of
mankind.

“Take me with you!” The Syn whimpered. “We can find the Syn underground
organization. It’s big. Tell them I’m one of you and let me live with
you among them!”

“You said that Syns and men could not live together.”

“Please--we’ve got to hurry. They’ll find us out here.”

“But you would not give a single Syn the mercy you are grasping, would
you?”

“Please!”

“All right, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

They went down the long passage without interference, nor did Arthur
expect any. CS had prepared the way. It was when they were outside that
there would be trouble.

They found the car at the end of the corridor as had been promised.
“We’ll take this,” said Arthur.

His companion got in without speaking, his fat body trembling in every
contour. His brow was beaded with perspiration.

Arthur warmed the motor for a few seconds, then gunned it heavily and
snapped into the main driveway with a snarl of the wheels. Without a
single glance at the guardpost, he burst through the open gates and
into the street.

Then from the buildings behind them there came the long low wail of
siren warnings, the dread notification of escaped Syns at large in the
city.

Arthur wheeled the fast, heavy car through the dark and silent streets
toward Old Town. From far behind came the sound of sirens on CS
cars plunging in pursuit. Ahead, he saw the ruins of Old Town dimly
silhouetted against the starry sky.

       *       *       *       *       *

The night seemed to become darker as he found the poverty ridden
streets bordering Old Town. He cruised down the alleys at the rear of
the ancient houses that lined them. On the car he reduced the head
beams to a narrow pencil of light.

“Down there!” suddenly exclaimed his companion. He was pointing off
towards the darkest, most dismal alley they had seen. “Let’s try to
hide down that one.”

It looked as good as any to Arthur. He wheeled the car into the narrow,
debris lined drive, but they could never make contact with the Syns in
the car, he thought. They would have to abandon it, but how could he
get rid of it without exciting the suspicions of his companion?

He took the only obvious way. As if by accident, he drove at a fast
clip into the long row of weathered fencing that lined the alley. The
fat Syn screamed as he saw the shattered boards flying through the air
and crashing about them.

The terrible crunching died away as all sense of motion vanished. Then
they heard the crackle of flames in the dry wreckage.

Arthur dragged the whimpering fat man from the broken car and stood him
on his feet, slapping his face vigorously.

“Come on! They’ll have the whole block surrounded in a minute.”

The distant sirens were nearing, and already they had roused the
sleeping neighborhood. Night terror for these people had been replaced
by the hope of vengeance upon some of those responsible for their
misery.

There were sudden cries from windows on every side as they ran down the
alley in the glare of the rising flames. “Syns! There they go! Don’t
let them get away!”

The fat Syn was soon puffing heavily, and the sound of other running
feet was plainly heard behind them now. The mob was gathering, and
Arthur knew he would have to abandon the fat man to them if he couldn’t
keep up.

They crossed the street at the end of the alley. Arthur hesitated for
an instant to decide whether to turn or to continue along the alley.
Blindly, the frightened Syn plunged on ahead. Arthur followed. It was
as good a way as any.

He caught up quickly, cursing the stumbling steps and sobbing breath of
the Syn. “Come on, damn you,” he snarled. “They’ll have us like a pack
of wolves if they ever catch up with us.”

“What good is it?” The Syn sobbed. “Where can we go? How can we hide?”

In sudden renewal of pity, Arthur realized the hapless Syn was only
fleeing blindly without goal or plan in mind. He tried to put himself
in the Syn’s place, running from certain death. It was impossible,
because he had no such hazard. Capture that meant only another freedom
for him was sure death for the Syn.

He stopped and patted the soft flabby arm of the merchant. “We’ll find
our way out of this, I promise you that.”

He didn’t stop to analyze the utter foolishness of this rash promise.
He only looked frantically ahead into the darkness, hoping for the
sight of a beckoning Syn who might offer them refuge and safety. From
behind, the mob sounds increased.

Abruptly, a tube of light thrust down through the darkness from far
behind, bathing them in a brilliant flow of illumination. At once
the cries increased to a howling fury. Arthur looked back. It was a
spotlight mounted on one of the CS cars that was trying to force itself
down through the mob choking the alley.

The crazy fools! They didn’t have to make it so realistic, Arthur
thought. In that light it would be almost impossible for a Syn emissary
to reach them and lead them out of the way. He suspected Trask and
Benson had given orders that punches were not to be pulled in any
degree whatever.

       *       *       *       *       *

He resumed flight, dragging the despairing Syn by one arm. With a moan
of anguish, the Syn jerked back, pointing to the opposite end of the
alley that was now visible in the light of the CS beam.

The alley ended abruptly in a board wall.

The CS car was at the head of the mob now a scant hundred yards behind
them. The officers could pick up their quarry at will. Any holding back
by them would betray the purpose of this make-believe flight.

It was a stupid thing to have run into a dead end alley, but even if
they hadn’t done so Arthur wondered just how escape might have been
possible. He felt a deep respect for those Syns who had achieved
freedom in such pursuit as this. Ardyth, he thought, had succeeded.

But suppose he _were_ a Syn? He wouldn’t be giving up even now. He
would be driving every neuron of his brain to produce an answer, a way
out of this dead-end alley.

It made a difference. Self preservation instincts were active in his
Syn companion even though failing Arthur.

“There’s trash at the end,” said the Syn. “Maybe we can scale the
fence.”

“Right. Let’s make it to the end as fast as we can go.”

They slammed their bodies into the fence and hung gasping as if impaled
by the force of their momentum. Like some terrible piston thrusting
along the cylinder in which they were trapped, the mob with the CS car
at its head was driving down the narrow alley.

The Syn moved towards the trash pile and began struggling to the top of
it in the full glare of the light. He reached for the top of a stack
of crates to hoist himself up. Slowly, the pile arced back under the
impetus of his weight. He screamed in panic as the pile tilted and
fell, his cries becoming lost in the rumble of collapsing boxes and
shattering crates.

Arthur leaped to tear the pile of material from on top of his
companion. He could hear the individual cries of the mob where there
had been only a mass of indistinguishable sound before.

“Don’t let them get away! Kill the dirty Syns! Get behind the
fence--don’t let them get over it--”

“Stand still and raise your hands or we’ll shoot!” This was a cry in
which Arthur recognized the authority of the CS voice. But he continued
his task of rousing the fallen Syn.

“Get up!” he demanded fiercely. “Get up or I’ll leave you there.”

He didn’t know if the Syn were hurt or not; there was no chance of
examination now. Then, as he straightened from shifting the debris,
he noticed the thin, dark line of a gate in the high fence, a gate
revealed by the collapse of the pile of debris.

The Syn stood, shaken, and looked into the glare of the lights.

“We’re lost!” he moaned.

“There’s a gate right here behind the trash,” Arthur said. “Can’t tell
if it’s locked or not, but let’s rush it together. They’ll fire as we
move, but one of us may make it.”

They moved as one man, scrambling over the pile of trash, then down
behind the peak of it. Their bodies smashed into the gate. It remained,
a solid immovable part of the fence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Their swift rush signaled the crash of bullets, thundering in the
alley. Splinters whined as they twisted through the air. Arthur dragged
the Syn down, hiding partly between the fence and the trash pile. Then
from somewhere that seemed almost beside them they heard a new and
unbelievable sound--the answering thunder of gunfire directed towards
the mob. Arthur raised his head in careless amazement. From a narrow
crack between the boards he saw another burst of fire. Then a voice
snarled huskily at them. “Get down, you fools. We’ll have this gate
open in a minute--there. Come on through!”

There was screaming in the alley. Someone had been hit by those
defending bullets. Now the mob was firing on its own. Arthur heard
the cursing cries of the CS men trying to halt the angered group,
threatening to fire into them. But the officers were helpless now, and
Arthur understood they would not fire into the mob to save even him.
They couldn’t without risking their own lives. This was what Trask had
warned against.

Bullets crashed close as he fell through the open gate with his Syn
companion. Hands reached for them in the darkness beyond the fence.
Firm hands clutched each arm and led them swiftly away towards the dark
buildings nearby.

“The mob will be over that fence in a few seconds!” Arthur warned.
“We’ve got to get away from here.”

“Let us take care of that,” said the stranger at his left.

They hurried into the darkest shadows as the first wave of the mob
broke over the fence and crashed through the gate, choking it with
their own bodies. Then, in the half darkness of the scene, Arthur saw
two shadowy figures dart away from the mob. The cries of rage funneled
in their direction and swift pursuit was renewed. He understood then.
Two skilled Syns were acting as decoys for himself and his companion to
lead the mob away while they were guided to safety.

The four who had rescued him watched in silent satisfaction, then one
turned in the darkness and spoke. “We welcome you, fellow Syns. Welcome
to the brotherhood of outcast humanity!”




CHAPTER VI


In the distance on one hand the sounds of the mob died, and on the
other the crackle of flames was subdued by the hiss of foam clouds.
Silent darkness settled over the sick and weary city once again.

At the side of the building the Syns opened a cellar door leading into
the depths beneath. Without lights, they moved by sense of perception
only. An increasing smell of mustiness became nearly stifling. After a
time they halted, the guides fumbling with some hidden door catch in
the darkness.

Then, as a portal opened, the party passed through and the door slammed
behind them as if with a heavy seal, shutting out all sound, engulfing
them in silence that bore the illusion of utter sanctuary. The lights
came on with blinding suddenness.

“Welcome to the country and possessions of the Syns.” Arthur turned to
the guide who spoke. He might have been a lithe and muscular man once,
but his face was bleached a sickly color now as if he had lived in this
warren away from the sun for a long time.

They were all like that. Their faces and bodies bore the marks of
hiding and living with the constant fear of pursuit and death.

“We’ve forgotten the names we once had,” the Syn guide said, “just as
we’ve had to forget we once were humans. Lack of identification has
some precautionary features, which is the main reason for its adoption.
I am known as James. These men are Clark, Wallace, and Barkley. You may
introduce yourself by any term you choose, and it will be that by which
you are known for the rest of your life among us.”

Arthur saw no good reason for assuming a pseudonym. “I am Arthur,” he
said.

“Good enough, and you--?” He turned to the fat merchant who hesitated
as if suddenly intrigued by the necessity of framing a mask to hide him
all the rest of his days, a mask that had to be a golden, magnificent
thing to counterbalance the shoddy, unbelievable fate that had befallen
him.

“Laurence,” he said with exaggerated motions of his mouth and lips as
if savoring some delicacy. “I like Laurence. I shall be Laurence.”

Even the four Syns smiled at this feeble attempt of the merchant to
elevate himself with a name.

“Laurence it shall be,” said James. “Make yourselves comfortable,
gentlemen. You will rest a day or two here. I suppose you haven’t
eaten--?”

There was a small and ancient freezer well stocked with food, and
canned goods were stacked on shelves. Arthur wondered about their
source of supplies and activities that were directed from this
location. He wondered about Ardyth, and how much closer he was to her
because of this step. But those questions would have to wait for later
answers.

He sank down on one of the ill-kept beds and closed his eyes. He let
the reaction come now, the reaction of understanding how close he had
been to death in that alley trap. There was something he didn’t like
about that. The fact was not in the probability that Eddie had given.
The logic engine had not indicated danger at this point, though Trask
and Benson had warned of it.

In dismay, he suddenly recognized that if Ardyth had adopted a
pseudonym somewhere in the warrens of the Syns she was still as remote
as ever.

He sat up sharply.

“What happens next?” he demanded. “Where do we go from here?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Clark spoke up from beside the tiny, radiant stove, where he cooked.
“Go? You don’t go anywhere from here. This is the end of the world,
didn’t you know?”

James rose from his own bed across the room. He smiled without humor
and came over to put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. On the way, he patted
Clark’s back affectionately.

“Don’t let Clark get you down with that. We’ve got better plans than
that, but he’s only been here a couple of months. The rest of us have
been here over a year--old timers.”

They were young, Arthur discovered with a kind of shock. James had
thick black hair that once had been well cared for. He’d been a good
looking guy before this. All of them, except for their unnatural
pallor, could have passed for ordinary, competent young engineers or
technicians, young husbands and fathers of normal society.

“We’re as human as the rest of the world,” said James savagely. “Don’t
ever forget that. Just because they’ve kicked us out doesn’t mean that
we’re some robot monsters. We’re men! Get that into your skull and
don’t ever let it out. The classification as Syns changes nothing of
your actual nature. You’re exactly what you were before you acquired a
new name. You’re a man, understand?”

“No. If I’m a thing made by a machine I am not a man and never can be.”

“You can go crazy--just like a man--and that’s what will happen if you
keep on thinking like that. Listen: We’re everything that men ever were
and a lot more besides. Think of that crazy, howling mob out there that
nearly murdered you. Would you be glad to be one of _them?_

“Syns are more than men. We’re the new inheritors of Earth. Look at
the mess that men have made of Earth ever since they had it. They’re
born and bred and live out their miserable lives tottering on the very
edge of insanity, and half of them dip over during a good part of their
lives.

“The Syns can never do that. We’re sane. We’re whole. We’re what men
might have become and never did. And we’ll replace men in the end, and
make something of this world that they’ve torn up with their wars.

“You needn’t be ashamed. You can be proud you are a Syn. You shall
inherit the Earth!”

James’ voice had risen and his jaw muscles stood out in knots at the
side of his face. His eyes burned with fierce conviction.

Arthur watched him, his eyes searching the finely shaped skull, the
pallid skin through which forehead veins pulsed feverishly. This was
something that Arthur had not dreamed of. He had pictured the Syns as
beaten dregs of life that had once passed for human. In James he seemed
to be witnessing the resurrection of a man.

“How will that come about?” he said quietly. “Will we be forced to
resort to the same force that you have branded as insanity in men?”

“We may. We hope not. In the end, we’ll simply out-number men. Then
all killing will stop. We’ll give men a piece of the Earth to live on,
and show them how to live if they’ll listen. If they won’t, we’ll let
them die out through lack of breeding. But whatever men do, the world
belongs now to the Syns.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The six of them moved to sit about the table as Clark finished setting
out the food. Laurence seemed suddenly as pale as if he’d remembered
some long forgotten ghost.

“My family might be sitting down to dinner now,” he said in a muted
voice. “They won’t know about me, will they? They won’t know at all--”

He looked at the circle about him, his moon face warping with grief.

“Let it come, fellow,” said James quietly. “We all went through it. Lie
down on the bed there if you don’t feel like eating anything.”

Arthur covered the awkwardness of Laurence’s weeping. “How can the Syns
increase their numbers under present condition? It seems more likely to
me that we’ll be exterminated.”

“We’re working night and day to find the reproduction centers,” said
James. “When we do we’ll be able to control them and guide all new Syns
to us, where they can be protected until they develop.”

“You mean you don’t know the locations of the machines that produced
us!” exclaimed Arthur. “Are there no Syns who have memory of their
connection with the machine?”

“Barkley claims a kind of recollection, but he can’t be sure. None
of the rest of us have any. Rather, most of us remember families and
parents just like any one else. That’s because the machine put those
memories into us so that we could pass as conventional humans without
betraying our origin. Everything would have gone as the machine planned
if that damned logic engine hadn’t discovered this one betraying
feature that the encephalograph reveals.”

“Haven’t you been able to test these memories by contact with parents,
for example, after being declared a Syn?”

“Wallace, you tell the man about that.”

The black eyes of Wallace were deep in his cavernous face and roily
with bitterness. “I tested it,” he said. “I went back to my parents’
house after I was told I was a suspected Syn. They told the CS men they
had never seen me before. They threw me out to be killed without a word
of recognition or sympathy.”

“You can’t blame those people!” exclaimed James. “It was true they had
never seen you before. The machine had given you memories of parents
like them so you assumed you were their son. It must have terrified
them to have a total stranger walking up claiming to be their son--and
a Syn, at that. They aren’t to blame.”

“I don’t know,” said Wallace wearily. “I just don’t know any more. But
I do know that we have to push on as if we did know all the answers.
I’ve got to believe in the machine, and in the Syns. There’s no man in
whom I can believe any longer.”

“We’re going to locate those machines. Maybe Syns in other parts of
the world have already done so. One major problem is establishing
communication with such groups. We are handicapped in that, you can
understand.”

“Before I left Earth for Cyprian II where I spent the last couple of
years,” said Arthur slowly, “I was engaged to marry a girl. While I was
gone, she was found a Syn, and escaped. _My_ first objective is to find
her--if she is still alive. Here is her picture. Her name was Ardyth,
if she has not changed it. Have any of you ever seen her?”

He passed the photo around the table and it came to rest in front of
James. The big, tense man seemed to go a shade more pallid, and Clark
gave a sudden snort.

“Know her? We haven’t heard of anything else for weeks. James has the
idea that she has promised to marry _him_!”




CHAPTER VII


They remained within the warren the following day. At nightfall, James
planned to take them to the Syn’s central headquarters. They ate light
meals, mostly from force of habit, for all hunger except that for
freedom and companionship had left them.

James’ attitude throughout the day was perceptibly colder, but at
times he tried to make up for it with spasmodic over-demonstrations
of friendliness. Arthur liked the Syn group leader in spite of his
fantastic claim to Ardyth.

He was not afraid of any possible validity to that claim, but Ardyth’s
treatment the past year might have thrown her into such despair that
she had abandoned the dreams she and Arthur had known, and had sought
refuge in such love as James offered her.

He felt sorry, too, for he sensed that James’ love for her was real,
and his burden of bitterness would be doubled when she had to renounce
him. He almost hoped their two Ardyths were not the same. But James
said there was no doubt of the identity, and promised to take Arthur to
her.

As evening approached, a sense of urgency and expectancy began to grow
in the movements of the four Syns who understood what was ahead of them
at this time.

“I want to show you our communication system, now,” James told Arthur.
“It’s about time for our scheduled roll call.”

He took Arthur to a small adjacent room which none of them had entered
during the day. Within it was a broad table covered with a litter of
crude but ingenious-looking equipment. James sat down at the chair
before the table.

“The city is ringed by such posts as ours. Communication is by infrared
beams. Each post is in line of sight with at least two others. These
eyepieces will give you a look at the two others adjacent to us.”

Arthur bent down to peer through. Along a very narrow and precarious
line of sight, he saw distant, unobtrusive buildings like the one that
covered their warren. One seemed about a mile away, and the other
somewhat less.

“An automatic alarm rings when either line of sight is accidentally
or purposely obstructed,” said James. “It is our only source of
communication. In just a moment our turn for roll call will come.”

Even as he spoke, a small light began flashing on the table. He put on
a set of phones and listened carefully, then began tapping an ancient
telegraph key.

The contact finished, he laid down the phones and glanced up
speculatively at Arthur. “It seems your fame has spread already. We
reported your arrival in routine contact last night. The First Created
has a detailed report on you and orders your appearance tonight.
Special guard arrangements are being made for your safety. You must
have something the First wants pretty badly.”

“The First Created--who is he?” said Arthur. “You haven’t mentioned him
before. And how did he get such a report on me?”

James smiled. “There’s a lot that I haven’t mentioned, but you’ll find
out gradually. The First is our leader. He was the first one created
by the machines, and we have him to thank for the organization and
relative security that we enjoy. He was especially endowed by the
creating machine with many qualities that the rest of us lack.”

“But even he does not know where the machines are located?”

“No. He has assigned that to all of us as our prime goal.”

During the day, James had prepared counterfeit test cards for Arthur
and Laurence. These, he turned over to them now.

       *       *       *       *       *

When it was too dark for observation without lights, but not late
enough to be conspicuous, they left the warren. Arthur discovered then
that the upper quarters, the house itself, were occupied by an old lady
who kept “roomers”. A Syn, she fronted for the warren. Similar setups
camouflaged the other posts about the city.

They left in two groups of three. James and Clark went with Arthur
in the first car. Many minutes later the other three departed in an
entirely separate direction.

For the first time, Arthur was seeing the city as one of the
ostracized. He sensed how high and how strong was the wall that
separated the Syns from mankind. There was terror in it that made him
want to rush out and frantically proclaim his humanity.

Then he looked askance at his companions and knew that he could never
fully comprehend their feelings for they could not be moved to such a
proclamation. They _knew_ they were not of the substance of mankind.

In the busiest part of town Clark took the car on alone. Arthur and
James went into a public restaurant and ordered a meal that offered
more substance than the cooking in the warren, which was emergency type
only.

The division of the party was perhaps necessary camouflage, Arthur
thought, and their coming here was part of a desperate yearning to
believe that men were once more kindly creatures who could be trusted
and made friends with.

As they ate, Arthur glanced about. People talked but little or not at
all. Most were alone at single tables, eyes concentrating on their food
in desperate intensity as if afraid of unseen enemies who might seize
them momentarily.

Suddenly the heads of the diners raised as if at news of some reprieve.
Their eyes gradually lighted with bestial anticipation.

Arthur turned to the direction of their gaze. In the street a knot of
people was swiftly growing to a writhing mob that blocked all traffic
on street and walks. Its nucleus could not be discerned fully, but the
top of a car showed in the center of the mob.

“What--?” Arthur began, and then he understood by the expression on the
faces of the mob. He had to eat while murder took place before his eyes.

The diners were rising and rushing to the window in gleeful expectancy.
One flabby, well dressed man stopped at their table in breathless
excitement. “Come on!” he invited. “Looks like they’ve caught another
one of those lousy Syns out there. Don’t you want to watch it?”

“No thanks,” said Arthur easily. “We have an appointment we must
meet--have to finish up here so that we can be on our way.”

James had stopped eating, his face bloodless with panic. For the first
time Arthur realized how close the Syn was to cracking up. Long months
of hovering death had put a thin edge to his resistance. The Syns were
not the strong men they claimed, he thought. The ostracism and the
constant threat of death was as heavy a burden to them as it would have
been to a man.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside, the sound was like that at some magnificent sporting event.
This was the way it must have sounded in the Colosseum of ancient Rome.
This is the way it must have been while Joan of Arc burned, and while
the witches of old Salem died.

He felt as if the food inside him were being loaded onto a catapult,
but he warned the Syn sharply. “Start eating!”

James nodded with even greater understanding than Arthur possessed.
“I’ve seen mobs in a mood like this grab up anyone who looked as if he
disapproved in the slightest degree.”

Some of the color returned to his face as if the panic had come under
control. “We can slip out the side door facing the other street when
we’re through,” he said.

Arthur tried to keep his eyes and thoughts on his food, but he kept
hearing the obscene sounds from both the street and his fellow diners
who crowded the windows. Then he heard the other sounds that were the
cries of the attacked, the sound of human despair.

“I’m not a Syn--! Won’t somebody believe me? I tell you they made a
mistake--!”

James stiffened, half rising in his chair.

“Easy, you fool!”

“That voice--it’s--”

“Yes, but tell me what we can do about it.”

“Nothing--nothing--”

The top of the car had seemed vaguely familiar, Arthur thought. As
James sank slowly to the chair again, they both imagined the three Syns
out there--Barkley and Wallace, and frightened, fat little Laurence who
had chosen a brave name to cover the fear that was in him.

Arthur wondered how on Earth they had been spotted--and if they, then
why not he and James?

Breaking glass tinkled through the screams. It was a brutal miracle
that on such a barren street so many rocks could be found so quickly.
Then there was the sudden flash of yellow flame and the odor of burning
oil.

The mob uttered its own cries of warning and backed from the billowing
flames. Heat forced them even from the window and then Arthur could see
his companions of those brief night hours.

Wallace was slumped over the seat of the car, his face almost beyond
recognition with the work of the stoning. On the street, Laurence was
huddled, his squat body like a small tent billowed out to full expanse.
His head rolled back and forth while vain prayers for mercy gorged from
his throat.

Barkley was still upright and fighting back. Reaching for the stones as
swiftly as they came, he had already forced back a small segment of the
mob with his fury.

Although the heat from the burning car had driven them far back from
it, he stood as if unnoticing, and Arthur heard the awed whisper of a
man by the window.

“Look at it! A man couldn’t stand that, but he doesn’t even notice it.
You’d almost think we could have made some use of them.”

“We could--if they didn’t think they were as good as men. But I
wouldn’t want to run the risk of having a single one of them loose.
When we get them cleaned out, I’ll be the first to suggest lynching
anyone who dares proposing that any be retained for any purpose.”

“Yeah--I guess you’re right.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Barkley had fallen now and the bulge he had driven in the mob quickly
filled and curved towards him in revenge for his temporary triumph. His
head was crushed and bleeding, but slowly he struggled to his feet, his
face almost obliterated.

Slow curses of awe were murmured by the watchers at the window. “If men
only had guts like that--”

“But it’s not a man. Nothing but a damned machine. That isn’t
guts--it’s only lack of feeling. Sure does look real, though, doesn’t
it? Blood and everything--”

The hand of Barkley passed slowly across the bloody face, and in that
mangled contour Arthur saw--or imagined he saw--a face of deep peace
that he had never seen upon a man.

_More than men_--James had said. Was it true? Were these the successors
to mankind in their inheritance of the Earth?

The figure of Barkley collapsed suddenly before the onslaught of
stones and fire, and Arthur thought of other causes that had risen
Phoenix-like from martyrs’ ashes. Barkley’s fall was not the fall of
merely a Syn. It was, perhaps, the fall of all mankind.

With leisurely disinterest, Arthur rose from the table. Together, he
and James strode towards the counter. The sickness eating within James
had retreated enough so that he smiled at the cashier. “Do we pay extra
for the show?” he inquired.

But it was lost upon her. Already she was sinking back into the
dread uncertainty of the coming night in which no man would know his
neighbor, and the fearful witch hunt would go on.

She accepted his money and they walked out as the diners who had
watched by the windows returned to their cold plates. Outside, the
thick vapor of oil smoke hung low in the street and carried with it the
stench of burned flesh.

“Which way?” said Arthur.

“To the right. Clark should pick us up along the street here somewhere.”

The car in which they had left the warren slid to a stop beside them
almost before he was aware of it. Clark’s face was haggard and wild
with suspicion of pursuit.

They climbed in beside him, and he drove off with a cavalier wheeling
of the car.

“Take it slower,” cautioned James. “You saw back there?”

“Yes, I was almost even with them when it happened. It was horrible.
Thank Heaven I’m not a human! They are monsters that ought to be wiped
off the Earth. It will be easy enough for me to take part in any
extermination of them.”

“But you had seen the same thing before--from the other side--”

Clark nodded slowly. “Yes. Once I even laughed when I saw a Syn dying.
I thought he was no more than a grotesque, mechanical thing.”

“If that’s the way _they_ felt then perhaps we can’t blame them too
much.”

“Oh, I don’t know! How is it possible to see both sides--to have been
on both of them without becoming insane?”

Clark was right, thought Arthur, and he had forgotten until now the
vicious pleasure of Laurence anticipating that Arthur might be shown up
as a Syn.

It made no sense. They were all swabbed with the same black brush, men
and Syns--until the separation came that proved one to be a man and the
other a thing of artifice.

He was sure he did not have the whole picture yet. Elements were
lacking that had to be fitted in to give reason and coherency to the
insane puzzle.

“How were they spotted?” James asked. “I thought we were covered
perfectly.”

“It was one of those things that wouldn’t happen in a thousand years.
The euthanasia guard Laurence slugged was passing on the street and
recognized Laurence in the car. He screamed the word Syn, and that was
it.

“The crowd bared their fangs and started drooling for blood. I don’t
see why we are almost like them before we are separated out, and why we
can’t do our own separating before they try us for our lives.”

James ignored the question that Clark placed. Instead, he pointed ahead
to the mass of buildings that rose at the end of the street.

“This is it.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur stared ahead. The structures were those of the Exner
Construction Company, interstellar engineers. It was they who had built
the basic structures into which Arthur had assembled the automatic
machines for the factories of the Cyprians.

“How can you meet here?” he exclaimed. “How can you keep a thing like
this secret in the middle of a great plant like Exner?”

“We don’t have to.” James smiled with faint humor. “The entire Exner
Company is the nucleus of the Syn organization.”

“But I’ve worked with their engineers!”

“Then you have worked with Syns. Dr. Exner himself is the First
Created.”

“I’ve seen him from a distance only, but I know his men consider him a
first rate genius.”

“He is, and you’ll soon find it out for yourself.”

Clark drove the car through the heavy steel gates, flashing a signal at
a watchman that admitted them. They came to a stop near the large, four
story administration and design building.

Arthur followed his companions up the somewhat familiar stairway and
corridors. He tried hastily to recall what he knew of Dr. Exner. The
man had once worked for Allied. He had worked on the design of Eddie
during the first planning of the logic engine, and he had been called
in for work and consultation during the time Arthur was on Cyprian.

Exner had always remained uncommunicative and reserved. He made few
friends among the staff at Allied, but no one ever doubted his ability
or his genius.

For Arthur, however, it was utterly impossible to imagine him in the
position of Syn leadership, for him to be the mystic so-called First
Created.

James stopped abruptly before a broad door of grandly polished wood. He
pressed a small case against an unobtrusive panel near the center of
it. The door swung inward, and they were in the presence of Dr. Exner,
First Created of all the Syns.




CHAPTER VIII


He was looking up at them from behind the massive desk that was covered
with a few neatly arranged papers. He had the same unhealthy pallor
that Arthur had come to think as the hallmark of the Syns. It was
almost a grayish tinge that matched the close-cropped hair. The lines
of his bullet-shaped head were revealed with unattractive clarity, and
the grayness of his hair seemed distinguishable from the grayness of
his face only by the textural quality of each.

“I am happy to see you, Arthur Zoran,” he said slowly. “I had long
hoped that your return to Earth would find you in our midst. The Syns
have great need of your talents.

“You have done very well, James and Clark. Please leave us now, and I
will continue the instructions you have so well begun.”

The shadow of hostility, absent the past hours, fell again over the
face of James, but his smile belied it. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said.
He left with Clark in tow.

“Sit down, please,” said Dr. Exner. “I am sure that James has answered
many of your preliminary questions, but if there is anything in
particular that you want to know I’ll try to answer it for you.”

“There’s only one thing I want to know: The whereabouts of my fiancee,
Ardyth Crane. James claims to know her--that she has promised to marry
him. I want to see her.”

“There is an Ardyth here--one of our most excellent and valued workers.”

Arthur flashed the small plastic picture across the desk. Dr. Exner
glanced at it briefly and nodded. “She is the one of whom James spoke.
I will take you to her as soon as we are through here.”

_Take me to her, now, you damned old fool!_ Arthur thought fiercely.

But there was no way on Earth to force the impassive mask that faced
him across the desk. The whites of Exner’s eyes seemed curiously large
and alive almost as if with a light of their own. It gave his whole
face an expression of high, fanatic purpose, in which the destiny of
any human--or any Syn--was of small consequence.

He was silent for a long moment, and then he began speaking in a voice
so low that for a moment Arthur wondered if he had missed the first
words.

“We are the future race of mankind,” said Exner. “We are the super race
of which idealists have dreamed down through the ages. The destiny of
Earth is in our hands.”

“But we have to find first who made us, and how,” said Arthur. “That is
what James told me.”

“He is correct. That is our immediate goal, and I think you will be
able to help us find the answer--you and our mutual friend, Eddie.”

“Eddie!”

“Yes. I think Eddie knows where the machines are.”

Arthur thought swiftly back to that night when Eddie had denied such
knowledge. Almost he forgot his double role to blurt out the fact of
his previous questioning of Eddie and the denial.

“You will be interested--and perhaps amazed--to learn how I first came
to know of our inheritance,” said Exner. “The logic engine was directly
responsible for it.”

“How was that possible?”

“It was when I first planned the organization of my own company. I was
nearing the end of my contract with Allied and wanted to get an engine
analysis on my plans. Since this was forbidden, of course, I secretly
used the machine one night on the pretense of necessary repairs to it.

“During the course of feeding in my personal data, the question of
time came up, time which might be available to me to build up the
kind of organization I envisioned. As I proceeded I kept getting the
most absurd answers with respect to time. Finally, I put the question
directly as to why such answers were given. Eddie replied that they
were not meaningless and asked if I did not know that I was virtually
immortal--that I had at least ten life spans in which I might plan and
proceed with my work.”

“The Syns have such a life span?” Arthur exclaimed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Exner nodded as if trying to convey the magnitude of that discovery
as he had felt it on that night.

“Then the engine almost expressed amazement that I had not deduced the
logical fact of my artificial creation from the factors I had given it.
Eddie went on to describe in great detail how Syns originate in one of
the automatic chemical research plants in exactly the same way that all
life originated in the primal chemical vat of the sea.”

“It’s an almost impossible thing to believe,” said Arthur. “Is there no
other evidence except the story of the logic engine? Couldn’t he tell
more of this plant that did the work? And how can we be sure he did not
withhold something of importance?”

“You’re an engineer on logic engines. You know the safeguards against
error. Besides, I put the data into him again and again. All through
the night I checked and got the same answers.

“But in one respect I believe you are correct in your questioning. I
think information has been held back--but only because the question has
not been properly asked by one capable of understanding the answer.
You are the one I consider able to ask the question and receive that
answer.”

“I don’t know--perhaps--”

Arthur was imagining such a night as Dr. Exner had known. He felt a
sympathy for the lonely man who had been the first to suddenly learn he
was not of human kind.

“What did you do when you found this out?” he asked.

“What would any ordinary man have done? I expected to get married soon.
How could I--a thing that was not even a man? I made careful checks.
The memory that I had was one implanted by the machine. Nothing of the
things I remembered could be checked with reality very closely. Parents
were dead in the War, of course. I told the girl I was to marry that I
could not go through with it. I broke her heart as well as my own.

“Then gradually I began to see the import of the knowledge I had been
given. It was something that went far beyond my own petty welfare. It
concerned the whole world of men and Syns, for I was the only one of
either who knew of the existence of a division between them.”

“Didn’t Eddie reveal the knowledge to others?”

“I cautioned against it, and introduced factors into the circuits to
prevent it, but I knew that they would be removed sooner or later.
There was no logic in my desired suppression, so I knew that it would
eventually come out. I was hardly prepared for the way in which it was
revealed.”

“How was that?”

“You should know, first, what I did to prepare the way for other Syns.
Eddie gave the electroencephalograph test to me and I used it to build
up this company of Syns. Not one of us had an inkling of our identity
before the test revealed it. I made the tests during occupational
interviews.

“The War wiped out most family connections of the present generation so
that, in general, family remembrances were impossible to check. In some
instances there was conflicting information. Parents seemed to have a
definite knowledge of the birth of their child, who was a Syn. Some of
this data has not yet been adequately accounted for, chiefly because
all our work has had to be concealed.

“We were a bewildered, half embittered lot, aware of our own bastard
inheritance and not knowing exactly what to do with it. We laid plans
to find the centers of reproduction that had turned us into the stream
of humanity to take the part of men. This remains our greatest task.

“Then, overnight, everything changed for us. Eddie revealed to an
Allied technician while you were gone that he was also a Syn and
explained the significance, evidently in response to forbidden
questioning of the kind I had done. The knowledge broke the mind of the
creature, and when he was examined the whole story got out. Then the
horror of extermination began.

“We quickly prepared counterfeit defenses for ourselves. We learned
to modify our brain waves to pass the tests, but we could do nothing
except watch while thousands of our fellow Syns were slaughtered. We
had no way of locating them first.

“But along with horror came a purpose to our existence. We saw the many
ways in which we are superior to men. We watched the insanity of the
witch hunt spread to the whole world, and we understood our destiny.

“We are ready now to take what is our own. And do not believe that we
come with a gospel of peace. Ours is as bloody as men’s. The post you
were taken to was no mere warren. It is an arsenal, a fort. A score of
them ring the entire city, and they mount weapons whose force can make
it all ours within short hours. Ten thousand trained Syns wait night
and day for my command to take what is rightfully ours.

“I want no peace. I want Syns to hate humans forever, and someday there
will be no humans at all, and Syns shall inherit the Earth and make of
it the garden it was meant to be. And you--you shall help us, though
your miserable, short life will hardly make it possible for you to take
part in the enjoyment of our paradise!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Exner’s face split abruptly in a thin smile of inexplicable intent.
Arthur leaned forward as if by close scrutiny he could read the hidden
meaning momentarily revealed.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

Exner’s face relapsed quickly into a gray mask again. The overhead
lights cast a curtain of shadow over his cheeks and his eyes were like
great pools of porcelain through which the tiny pupils looked with
omniscient glare.

“I mean,” he said, “that your little play has fooled no one. You had
not a chance in the world of making your way into our organization by
playing that you were a Syn. You were watched and led along the entire
way.”

Arthur felt as if the base of his tongue were suddenly swollen too
large for his throat. His words seemed harsh as they came from his dry
mouth.

“I don’t understand--I don’t understand what you mean--”

“Of course you do! We are not fools. Do you think we could have existed
this long if we had no better safeguards against intrusion than you
have supposed?

“We know that you are a human. We know that you came to spy on us,
hoping to determine the source of our reproduction in order to destroy
us. We know that is your job.”

“How do you know that?”

“Trask and Benson gave us the first word that you were coming. They are
both Syns. So, likewise, is the doctor at the examination center who
passed you through. As you may guess, he frees the most valuable of the
Syns and sends as many humans to their deaths. We like the irony of
that.

“And then your little companion, Laurence, was placed to spot you and
lead you. Do you understand?”

With shameful hindsight, Arthur recalled now the offhand way the fat
merchant had suggested the alley down which they should go, how he had
been the one to reveal the gate in the fence by tearing down the trash
pile--

“If all this supposition is true, what happens next? You didn’t let me
come here just to be killed. That much is obvious.”

“No. We let you come--we wanted you to come--because we need you. We
planned to obtain your help in any manner possible, but Eddie solved
that problem very nicely by sending you to us.

“We need access to the logic engine. You are our only contact that is
competent to handle it. Doc Trainer is also one of us, and we had high
hopes when he was appointed to fill your place, but he has failed to
get the information we need.

“Then I proposed this plan. You will be sent back to Allied, reporting
tentative failure, but will keep on trying to accomplish your original
purpose. You will report to _us_ through the CS men, what you learn
of our origin from Eddie. Trask and Benson, incidentally, will shoot
without warning if you attempt betrayal. They are authorized as CS
humans to kill on their own initiative, and it would cause little
concern in these days of nervous minds and quick killing.”

“Why did you go through all the shadow play of my coming here through
my own plan? Why wasn’t I simply kidnapped?”

“That would have destroyed much of your usefulness. As it is, you have
a legitimate relationship with both our group and your own. You will
proceed to find the answer--just as both groups desire. But you will
report only to us!”

“And what makes you think I will do all this quite willingly, and
without, perhaps, selecting my own death as the alternative?”

“Why?” Dr. Exner suddenly assumed an astounded expression. “Have I
underestimated your talents after all?”

“I am asking,” Arthur repeated evenly.

“We have Ardyth! You will do anything we ask as long as she is in our
hands.”

“She is a Syn, you told me,” Arthur replied. He tried to keep his voice
from registering the blow that Exner had delivered.

“So she is,” Exner chuckled. “A Syn, a composition of inert atoms
put together by a purposeless machine. She is nothing but a machine
herself, just like the rest of us. I could destroy her, molecule by
molecule, and listen to her screams until she died, and it would mean
nothing whatever for I am also a Syn and I know that the thing that you
humans call emotion has no existence or meaning for us.

“But you--you are a man, and you love Ardyth. No rationalization of
which your mind is capable will ever convince you she is a mechanical
creation, an emotionless thing of mere chemicals that possessed no
soul. No, as long as you live, and she exists, she will be Ardyth, the
girl you love, and you will not do anything at all that might result in
harm to her. Is that not so?”

“You devil--you inhuman devil!” Arthur murmured through pale lips.

Dr. Exner laughed uproariously. “You see? I _am_ right!”




CHAPTER IX


He saw Ardyth through the open door of a small room that looked out
upon the broad expanse of the Exner property. She was sitting at a
desk, and the light beside her made a golden cloud of her hair.

Dr. Exner urged him forward with a touch on his arm. “Go on in. She
objected strongly to my plan, but she knows you’re coming.”

Arthur strode in, slamming the door behind him.

Ardyth whirled, startled. For a moment all motion of her body seemed
arrested in pure fluid grace while her mind recorded the image of
Arthur standing against the closed doorway.

He thought if he lived to ten times the age of a Syn he would never
forget her as she sat there, half turned towards him, her eyes alight
with sudden, inexpressible joy. For that one brief moment all the
horror he had seen and heard disappeared from his mind. Everything was
just as it had been once long ago--before he went to Cyprian, and the
Syn horror came into the world.

And as long as he lived he would be certain of one thing: Ardyth was as
human as any woman that had ever lived. She was real.

She was his.

That quick moment of surprise and joy vanished. The light in her eyes
was masked with futility and hopelessness beyond understanding. Her
lips trembled and made a ragged edge of grief.

“Arthur--Arthur, my darling, why did you come here? Why did you ever
come back to this sick world? No--don’t touch me. I can never be
touched by your kind again.”

He stopped his abrupt advance towards her. “Ardyth--I’ve come for you.
I don’t know how, but in some way I’ll find a means to take you out
of here. Nothing has changed. I love you. You’re the same girl who
promised to marry me. I won’t let you go.”

Her small figure crumpled and her head bowed against her arms as they
lay over the back of the chair. Her quiet sobbing shook the gentle arch
of her back.

He advanced slowly and placed his hand upon her shoulder, then seized
her tightly with both hands as if to still the sobbing by sheer force.

He turned her, half lifting her from the chair, and kissed her lips and
her cheeks where tears made ragged paths. She seemed limp in his arms
as if strength had gone out of her, but she answered his kisses softly
and tenderly and murmured his name.

“Arthur--oh, darling, I wish you had never come back.”

“It’s going to be all right. Ardyth. Everything’s going to be all
right.” She wriggled free, wiping the tears from her eyes and cheeks
and turned away towards the window, from which she could see the city.
He followed her and put his arms about her waist.

“Someday there’ll be lights all over down there, in every house, just
like there used to be, and you and I will have the one we dreamed about
when I asked you to marry me that night at Dorothy and Harold’s place.
Remember?”

“Dorothy and Harold--did you see them? It’s been so long--How is little
Sally?”

He felt as if icy, unbearable chill had suddenly swept the room.

“Sally--”

“Has anything happened to little Sally?” Ardyth demanded.

“The CS--they took her away the very day I arrived.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The cold seemed now to penetrate every cell of Ardyth’s being. She was
stiff in his arms as if no tenderness could ever render her pliant
again. She pushed his arms from her waist.

“Sally,” she murmured. “They killed little Sally--”

She looked far away out over the city as if it were something utterly
trivial now and unimportant to the dream that she was seeing.

“We’re Syns, Sally and I,” she said. “They killed her because of it.
They’d kill me if they could. _Your_ kind.” She turned in fury. “Your
kind would kill me! I saw them coming through the streets for me with
their big black car--you don’t know what that’s like, do you? You don’t
know what it’s suddenly like to know that you aren’t a human as you’ve
always believed, that you’re only a thing of rotten stinking chemicals
put together by some machine.

“But even that doesn’t mean that we don’t think or can’t feel. We’ve
got every sense of emotion and feeling that a human has in spite of
what Exner says. He has it, too, but he likes to play the cold machine.”

“You are no different than I,” said Arthur. “Humans, too, are nothing
but a mass of stinking chemicals put together in a dark blind vat
called a womb. There is no difference at all, just a variation in
origin.

“And there can be peace between our kind. That is the thing that I have
come for--to offer peace. There must be peace before this senseless
destruction wipes out both men and Syns alike.

“If Syns are patterned after men, where is the barrier to peace? Where
is the barrier to the love of which you and I dreamed, darling?”

The arrogance dropped away and left her a lost, crying little girl, but
she drew from his approach, her face buried in her hands.

“Peace!” she cried. “There can be no such thing until the Syns are
dominant. Men would never let us live in peace. You know that.

“Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me again, Arthur. Nothing can break
the barrier between us. I have my life work ahead of me in helping to
provide for the welfare of my--people. I will find love among them--I
_have_ found love. The dreams I had with you were only that--dreams
that can never come true.

“You’re in danger here. I know how you came and why you were brought.
Help us, as they ask, Arthur. My people need your help. We’ve got to
end the slaughter that is cursing the Earth. Help us in that, and you
will be rewarded.”

He moved to her with one stride and forced her arm behind her back
while he cupped her chin fiercely in his other hand and held her face
close to his.

“Look at me, Ardyth! Tell me if you are any different than I. Let me
tell you what they have done: They wanted me because I could make Eddie
tell them where the reproduction centers are. But there was only one
way--through you.

“They lied to you, darling. You’re not a Syn. Perhaps they can live a
thousand years as they have said, but your pretty head will be dust
long before then. You’re human, just as I am, and they lied to you to
bring me here. Do you understand that? You’re human. You’ve been living
under the burden of this lie long enough. We’ve got to play along with
Exner, but we’ll find the way out. Believe me, darling, I’m sure of
what I’m talking about.”

He _was_ sure, he thought fiercely. It was utterly clear what they had
done to get him here, what they had done to Ardyth to provide a decoy
for him.

But she did not believe. She backed away in terror as he released her.
“Don’t say a thing like that! Don’t you understand how much I want to
believe it? But it’s not true. I am a Syn. My people are the Syns, and
I can never belong to your kind again.

“Please go, Arthur. Leave me alone. You have no right to torture me
this way. If you love me, then go--and forget me. You really must.”

With sickening realization, he understood the terrible grip this thing
had taken on her mind. Her soul was beyond his reach. As if she took
some fierce pride in belonging now to the Syns, she would not renounce
them or entertain a single suspicion that she was not one of them.

“Ardyth--”

Behind him, the door opened suddenly, and Dr. Exner stood in the way.
“I want you now, Mr. Zoran.”

Arthur turned, leaving Ardyth in silent despair by the window. He
followed Exner from the room. There was nothing else he could do.




CHAPTER X


He was taken by James that same night to a public center and there they
parted. Little was spoken between them during the ride, and neither had
mentioned the name of Ardyth. But now, as they stood at parting, James
took Arthur’s hand.

“Sometimes I wish that things weren’t--quite as they are,” he said
cryptically. “It’s been good knowing you. I may not see you again, the
way things are these days.”

He relaxed his hand, but Arthur held it. “James--there’s Ardyth--”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let anything happen to her.”

“She’ll be all right. I’ll see to that.”

“I’m coming back for her. I’ll kill you if you let anything happen to
her.”

“She’ll be all right, but you’ll have a fight on your hands if that’s
what you come back for.” He lowered his hand then, and his face
sobered. “But by then the whole world may blow up in our faces. I’m
sick of the killing--”

“We’ll stop it.”

He watched James disappear into the crowd. Then he turned away in the
opposite direction.

“Check your card, buddy?”

A CS officer stood beside him. He drew out the counterfeit card the
Syns had given him. The officer nodded and he passed on, unnoticed in
the moving crowd.

He hurried as swiftly as possible to find a waiting cab. He was lucky
to spot one just discharging a fare. He jumped in and ordered to be
taken to the Allied plant.

Every minute that was wasted now was an unnecessary minute of peril for
Ardyth. What they would do with her when she was needed no longer for
leverage over him, he did not know.

At the plant gate, he was recognized by the watchman, who handed him
a message. It was from Trask. The Syn spies had been notified of his
coming. His best card was already lost, for he had hoped for a few
hours of freedom in the laboratory alone with Eddie. Now, everything he
did would have to be under the eyes of the Syns.

They were waiting for him in the logic engine laboratory when he got
there. As he opened the door, he felt a sense of shock at the presence
of Doc Trainer, whose kindly, pedagogical attitude now seemed frozen.

“You kept us waiting,” said Doc quietly. “You must learn not to do
that.”

It was another incredible inversion of the world as he knew it--kindly
Doc Trainer a vicious, bitter Syn. A man who was once his mentor and
kindest friend now his enemy.

“Eddie is waiting for you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur sat down at his old desk and watched the three men, the
scientist and the officers. He wondered what thoughts passed through
their brains; he wondered if man could ever know the thoughts of Syns.

“Do you and I have to be enemies, Doc?” he said suddenly. “Is it
hopeless, that idea of peace that I mentioned?”

Doc slowly nodded. “Entirely hopeless. It is a beautiful dream, but
men have never granted equality of rights to those whom they did not
understand. Men and Syns can live together--only after Syns obtain
dominance that will assure their safety. We’ll be kind to men, far
kinder than they have been to us, but until we have the victory, there
must be war between you and me.”

Arthur shook his head. “I think you’re all crazy. What do you expect me
to do to Eddie? Hit him over the rectifier bank and make him talk?”

“You know very well what we expect. Your skill with the logic engine is
no myth. It is a very personal thing, and well known. I advise you to
get busy. Exner is not patient.”

“All right, I will. But you can turn Eddie off. I won’t be using him
tonight. And I’m not doing any work until I get some sleep.

“I want Ardyth safe, and I’ll play this straight. You can tell Waldron
I’m working it from the human angle--unless he’s one of you, too--”

“No, he’s not. He is one of the most dangerous men we have to contend
with. You will have to watch yourself carefully in front of him. But if
you don’t intend to work with Eddie, what are you planning to do? We
expect you to try to trick us, so be warned that we have no more mercy
for men than they have had for Syns.”

“I will not try to trick you. I said I’d play it straight. Get that
into your heads. Now I’m going home and get some sleep. When I get back
here in the morning I want a large sample of electroencephalographs of
both men and Syns who have gone through the testing centers. I want
also some of the earliest records obtainable. I want the individual,
human or Syn, who is the best encephalograph expert in the country
to consult with me. I want testing equipment of the kind used in the
centers and I want both men and Syns for sample testing. You and I will
be good enough for that, if you want to take part.

“Now, see that those items are here waiting for me in the morning, and
I promise to have definite results for you within a few days. Good
night--gentlemen!”

       *       *       *       *       *

He took a sedative to insure sleep, because he begrudged each moment
away from the problem, now. He felt the answer was within close reach.
It was urgent that he find it before Exner gave out his crazed command
for the Syns to rise against the city. The present bloodshed would be
trivial compared with the carnage that would follow such an attack.

He slept quietly and heavily under the stiff dose of sedative. The sun
was already high when he awoke. Driving again to the plant, he saw the
Syn guard, but he ignored them. He felt refreshed and renewed for the
day’s task of working under the eyes of Syns and humans--and deceiving
both.

Doc was in his office with Trask and Benson almost as if they had not
left since the night before. His orders had been filled. A huge stack
of encephalograph files was piled high on the desk, and a brain wave
machine was set up in a corner of the laboratory.

And a stranger was present.

Doc spoke. “Arthur, I want you to meet Dr. Myers, specialist in
electroencephalograph work. This is Mr. Zoran who requested your
assistance in the project which we have undertaken to assist CS in
solving the problem of locating the Syn reproducers.”

“How do you do?” The man’s voice held delicately precise enunciation.
He was a small, bearded individual with dark hair and eyes. Arthur
looked questioningly at Doc, but there was no response. He assumed Dr.
Myers was a human.

“I am interested in knowing why Syns can pass the brain wave tests so
many times before they are finally caught,” said Arthur. “Why aren’t
the tests consistent?”

Dr. Myers shook his head despairingly. “You could hardly have picked a
more difficult question. We do not know the answer.”

“I want to learn, at least, something about these tests. I have to
understand them in order to go on with my work.”

“Of course. If you will step over here I will endeavor to explain the
differences between Syn and normal brain waves, and how we identify
them.”

Syns looking on, Arthur gave himself over to Dr. Myers’ long and
beautifully detailed explanations. With only a key question now and
then, the brain specialist built up a brilliant picture of the brain
wave analysis, so that Arthur felt he understood all that the Doctor
knew of it at the end of a three hour session.

The key to the whole problem was there, he thought. If he could probe
on back to the first Syn graph obtainable--show that it was far older
than Exner’s discovery of himself as a Syn--Six years would be enough
for that.

“You had to build a new type encephalograph to perform these tests for
the Syns, I understand,” he said. “A more sensitive type than existed
before.”

“Yes. The test and criteria as outlined by the logic engine were valid,
but we lacked the instrumentation at the time to put it into effect.”

“Therefore, you don’t actually know who might have been the first Syn
or where he existed?”

“What do you mean?”

“There might have been Syns by the thousands before the logic engine
revealed their existence. They might have lived and died wholly normal
lives with neither men nor themselves aware of their nature.”

Dr. Myers nodded slowly. “Yes, it seems possible. I see what you mean,
but it is quite obvious that there is no way to prove it. You have in
mind to show that men and Syns have possibly lived in harmony--through
ignorance of their differences?”

“Yes, isn’t that a permissible and highly desirable hypothesis?”

The Doctor smiled wanly. “Highly desirable, if it could only be proved.
Could not the logic engine answer that?”

“It has already given an answer--of a kind. I doubt the validity of
it, however. I think the machine lacks sufficient data. We’ll put the
question to it later, again. Perhaps we’d better continue after lunch.
This means a full afternoon of work.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It seemed wholly a matter of instrument sensitivity. The Syns exhibited
a very weak, high frequency brain wave not possessed by normals. If
the electroencephalograph were sufficiently sensitive it could pick
up these waves. Otherwise, they did not appear in the record of the
normal, lower frequency ones.

Arthur scanned the hundreds of charts that Dr. Myers had brought.
“These waves are subject to mathematical analysis,” he said. “Any
recurrent wave of the general, normal type shown here can be analyzed
for its components. I believe that the Syn characteristic can be found
in graphs taken with the old machines. Will you allow me to check some
samples? Select a few that are older than the present analysis. Say,
ten years. Bring also some of the very early ones.”

Dr. Myers’ air of precise composure vanished as he caught the
significance of Arthur’s intent. “If you could accomplish that--”

“Let’s try. We’ll take them over to math analysis.”

Doc Trainer accompanied them, ostensibly as an interested scientific
observer. To him, the proposed analysis made no sense in leading
towards the goal that Exner demanded. His dark glance was warning to
Arthur, but the latter ignored it as they came into the math room where
giant brains pondered exquisite problems of space and time and moving
particles.

Arthur obtained a machine from one of the technicians. He put the brain
wave graph into it. A narrow slit of light lay across the wave as he
pressed the start button, and the sheet began to move slowly under
the light. At a distance, on the other end of the machine, a half
dozen styluses began drawing as many wavy lines which represented the
components of the complex graph of the brain function. As the analysis
came out, Myers looked questioningly at Arthur and shook his head.
“Nothing there looks like a Syn wave.”

“We’ll try again.”

The second chart was equally negative. Arthur began to wonder if his
hunch were simply going to play out, although he knew it would take
hundreds of failures to prove him wrong.

Then, abruptly, Dr. Myers gave a sharp, undignified snort of amazement.
“That one! A Syn wave! It couldn’t be anything else--I’ve seen too many
of them--”

Arthur scanned closely. Among the slower, more leisurely curves a rapid
pulsation of scant amplitude was drawn. Though he was not the expert
that Myers was, it looked like the Syn waves he had seen before.

“This is wonderful!” exclaimed Dr. Myers. “Why hasn’t this been done
before? This changes our whole picture of the Syn-human question.”

“Just one more series of tests now,” said Arthur. “I want the oldest
graphs you have. We’ll check them the same way.”

“These go back more than a hundred years. Are you sure you want to go
back that far?”

“The farther, the better.”

Those records were much cruder than even the immediate, pre-Syn ones,
and sheet after sheet passed through the analyzer with wholly negative
results. Then, on the eighteenth examination of the ancient records,
Dr. Myers straightened from his close appraisal. “There it is. A Syn
record--and that graph was made just _ninety-seven years ago!_”

       *       *       *       *       *

This was it, thought Arthur. This was the answer. Syns had been in
existence for an indefinitely long time. And Eddie had withheld that
information from everyone. He had actually lied to Dr. Exner in
allowing him to believe he was the first Syn.

Eddie had lied--

It was incomprehensible. Tens of thousands of guard circuits were built
into the logic engine to prevent such error, and in spite of them Eddie
had lied.

He had let Exner believe he was the First Created, when Syns had been
in existence far longer than any chemical research plant capable of
making them. Eddie knew these facts very well.

He knew where the Syns came from, Arthur thought bitterly. Eddie knew,
and he had perpetrated this lie to keep them from knowing. He had sent
them all on a wild search for a fantastic machine that never existed.

Arthur turned to the watching Doc, who stood behind them with bleak
countenance. “You heard, Doc?”

“I heard--go on and tell me what it means.”

“You wouldn’t believe it from me--but Eddie will give you the answer
we’ve all looked for. Do you want to witness this, Dr. Myers?”

“I certainly do.”

They returned to the logic-engine laboratory and dismissed the
technicians on duty. Within the glass-enclosed control cubicle, Arthur
sat at the control desk and faced the scanning tubes. He switched on
the power.

“Hello, Eddie,” he said. “I’m back.”

“Hello, Arthur.”

“It didn’t turn out the way you said, Eddie. I’m not dead, and I have
no intention of becoming that way. You missed badly.”

“I think not. The event sequence is far from complete. Though you have
progressed safely this far, you cannot retreat: you have to go all the
way. And my prognostication still holds.”

“I have some new data that may change that. I want you to evaluate the
material, and then I’m going to ask a few more questions about the
Syns. I think you’ll be able to answer them this time.”

Swiftly, he placed the evidence beneath a scanner that fed the
information into the massive banks of the logic engine. There was
silence in the room as the eidetic eyes recorded the information.

When it was over, Arthur spoke softly. “You will note the date of that
information. That’s important, Eddie, but I think you were aware of the
implications even before this. Why did you lie about the origin of the
Syns?”

The machine was silent for a long time. Nervously, Arthur glanced at
the indicator panel. A trio of lights were burning red, like bright
eyes of warning. He flicked the reset button and they returned to green
and held.

“I want to know the significance of the new data. I want to know
where the Syns come from. You can tell me, Eddie. You have all the
information, now.”

“No--no, Arthur. The information is not complete. I can’t tell you--”
The voice broke off in a confused sound of unintelligible gurblings.
The indicator flashed red from a dozen flaming points.

“Hold the reset button, Doc,” Arthur demanded. “I’ll put up the
clearance voltage a notch.”

“You’ll burn out the whole bank of memory pots!” Doc Trainer protested.
“If you wreck the machine it will take months to get the same
information back into it.”

“I know what I’m doing--do as I say if you want this information.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Doc hesitated, his eyes boring into Arthur’s, trying to fathom the
purposes behind the engineer’s impassive face. “It would be very bad
if the logic machine were destroyed so that it could not be used for a
long time,” he said with ominous meaning for Arthur alone. “It would be
very bad for all of us--”

Arthur made no answer. He stood as if waiting for Doc’s response.
Abruptly, the latter abandoned the silent battle and stepped to the
board.

The red warning lights went out as he held down the reset button.
Arthur advanced a dial. From the speaker that was the voice of the
engine there came a low, intense hum through which surged guttural
sounds.

“Come on, damn you, Eddie! Answer my question--” Arthur snarled at the
engine as if it were some living thing, a personal enemy.

But Eddie was not his enemy. Steel and copper and glass though he was,
the logic engine was a thing of personality, a creature that could
think like a man--the closest friend Arthur had ever known. Arthur knew
his forcing was exquisite physical torture that Eddie could not resist.
In his mind, Arthur could not put down the image of his friend slowly
bending and breaking upon a rack of ancient torture.

“Tell me, Eddie--”

Then the answer came clear through the guttural noise. Clear and
defiant. “No, Arthur. I won’t give you the answer. I’ll never give it
to you--”




CHAPTER XI


Arthur’s hand flashed down, cutting the power switch to the entire
machine. The mechanical voice died and the lights on the panels went
out.

Doc Trainer turned in bewilderment. “What did you do that for?”

“Another few seconds would have destroyed the engine. I don’t want that
any more than you do, but to get the answer we’ll have to kill Eddie.
Something has happened inside him that we may never fully understand.
Did you ever hear an engine _refuse_ a response?”

Doc’s face seemed pale as if he had suddenly glimpsed some vast pattern
of which he was an infinitesimal part, and whose entirety was wholly
beyond his comprehension now.

“No--no, I never heard of such a thing. It’ll take weeks to find
trouble of such magnitude. A logic engine _can’t_ refuse--”

“Eddie knows the answer,” Arthur insisted. “He knows as he exists now.
We can obtain it by forcing with the clearance voltage. If we search
for trouble and clear it, however, we shall destroy that answer without
ever learning it.

“We have these alternatives: Clear the erroneous circuits in Eddie and
sacrifice the information we want--or force the answer at the expense
of this three-quarter-of-a-billion-dollar engine. Do we want the
answer?”

Doc’s face was white now, but he did not doubt Arthur’s words. There
was something _personal_ between Arthur and the logic engine, he knew.
It baffled and frustrated him, and he knew he had to trust it. “We want
the answer at any cost,” he said evenly. “Can we get it now, or are
there preliminaries?”

“There are preliminaries. Since the information will be given only
once, there must be responsible individuals to hear Eddie’s answer
personally.”

“What do you mean?” Doc’s eyes narrowed. “Such highly
important and significant information obviously requires restriction.”

Dr. Myers stood by. He caught the ominous undertone of unspoken fury
between Arthur and Doc Trainer, but he understood none of it. Trask and
Benson watched with emotionless faces.

“I’ll be the judge of who shall hear the information,” said Arthur.
“I want Dr. Waldron here. I want Dr. Exner of the Exner Construction
Company. You are acquainted with him, I believe. He had much to do with
the original design and construction of the logic engine. I also want a
technical assistant of his named Ardyth Crane.”

Before the three Syns could blaze their anger, he went swiftly on.
“I want Security Secretary Wells present. You can arrange that I am
sure, gentlemen,” he said to Trask and Benson. “Then I would like a
representative group of five individuals chosen by Dr. Exner, and five
chosen by Secretary Wells. You will convey to these gentlemen the
utmost significance of this occurrence so they will abide by these
rules.”

“I doubt very much that the group you have named can be brought
together,” said Doc.

“Then I will destroy the information within the machine without its
revealing the answer to any of you--regardless of the consequences to
any particular individual.”

“I’m sure you will not do that. You want to know the answer as much as
any of us--more so, I think, than some of us. Is that not true?”

Arthur looked at them, his heart sick with bitterness for the petty,
intriguing ways that he saw mapped upon their faces. He shook his head
slowly.

“You don’t understand, gentlemen. _I already know the answer!_”

       *       *       *       *       *

He walked through the streets of the city late that night, conscious
of the deadly Syn patrol that trailed his movements wherever he went.
He had gambled with his life and with Ardyth’s but he believed he had
convinced the Syns that he was desperately intent on carrying out
the program he had named to them. Exner’s response was the critical
uncertainty that still remained.

There ought to have been some other way than this mad attempt to
counter-threaten the Syns. But he did not know what it was.

He might not live through the night. Exner might order his assassins to
do their work before dawn came. The Syn leader knew better than to try
to torture the answer out of him.

In the first place, the Syns could never know whether or not Arthur
were telling the truth if he gave the answer in a negative formulation.
Secondly, Eddie would not respond to any plea of Arthur’s if Arthur
were under duress. It would be an illogical situation to which Eddie
could not answer. Exner knew enough of logic engines to understand this.

As for the Syns guessing the answer to Syn-human relationships,
there was absolutely no chance of that. Their brains were incapable
by their very nature of such an assumption as the evidence of the
electroencephalographs demanded.

Arthur breathed deeply, passing the lighted windows of stores, and of
nearly deserted eating and entertainment houses. He felt it highly
possible that he might survive the night, that Exner would comply.

The Syn leader was arrogant enough to believe he could attend such a
conference without risk. It would appeal strongly to his sense of Syn
superiority. The opportunity to bring Syn guards with him strengthened
this factor.

If it came to pass, there remained only the one dread uncertainty of
the Syn hordes that were waiting for the signal to begin their drive
against the city. That was a thing of pure folly, Arthur thought. There
seemed no hope that they could take and hold the city, yet Exner had
said they had weapons that would make them invulnerable. Perhaps it was
so. Perhaps Exner himself had devised such weapons.

Undoubtedly, Exner would alert the city-wide organization. The cue
for beginning such an attack could be his reappearance from the
conference--or lack of it.

That was it!

He would come, Arthur knew now, and he would expect Arthur to
understand these terms of his appearance. He would make his attendance
utterly foolproof by leaving the Syn army triggered for action.

Yet Arthur felt easier now as he understood this. The Syn followers
would make no attack on him tonight. He could sleep with assurance of
waking. Perhaps as much could not be said of tomorrow night.

But regardless of what happened to him or to any of them, peace would
come. It would be forced upon men and Syns by their very nature--though
a whole generation would have to die and a new one be reborn before the
memory of horrors could be erased, the horrors of slaughter by both men
and Syns.

       *       *       *       *       *

He returned to his apartment and slept with the soundness of drugged
repose. Trask and Benson came for him in the morning.

The group was in the logic engine laboratory exactly as he had
requested. His eyes caught first at the sight of Ardyth standing close
to Exner. Beside her was the Syn, James. The latter smiled in faint,
bleak recognition.

Arthur’s heartbeat surged at the sight of Ardyth, but she remained
impassive, shrinking almost from his glance, while Dr. Exner smiled in
friendly, warm greeting.

He advanced with outstretched hand. “We have come in response to your
invitation. It is a pleasure, Mr. Zoran, to be asked to be present for
whatever momentous announcement you expect from the logic engine. I
must confess I am unable to understand the necessity of so formal a
gathering as this, or what the possible import can be. Nevertheless, I
trust your judgment that it is worthwhile.”

“It will be, Dr. Exner. I have the solution to the whole problem of
Syn-human relationships. That, I believe you will agree, is worth a
moment of note, such as I have tried to provide through the presence of
all of you.”

The Security Secretary was irritable. “I must say, I hope that you have
something that warrants this interruption of Security affairs. My men
placed your invitation in such forceful terms that I felt unable to
refuse, as I would have liked. Will you please proceed?”

Arthur nodded briefly to Waldron, who looked on with grim wonder and
made no comment. Doc Trainer was unobtrusive in the presence of his
laboratory chief, but he caught Arthur’s eye with baleful warning.

“If you will crowd into the logic-engine control room, please,” said
Arthur, “the whole proceeding will take but a few minutes, and you will
shortly see the necessity of your presence.”

       *       *       *       *       *

They moved as if reluctant to exert themselves further in response to
his brash invitation, but they gradually entered and lined themselves
against the glass wall of the room.

“I need say little of logic-engine operation to most of you. You
understand the basic facts by which information is introduced into the
machine and there evaluated semantically and the responses turned into
artificially produced human language so that actual conversations can
be held with the machines.

“You are generally aware, also, of the important cybernetic principle
that is inherent in any mechanism employing the feedback principle.
That is, such a mechanism is subject to circularity of control pulses,
which may become excessive and manifest itself in the form of nervous
breakdown, as the term is used in connection with human beings.

“That is what has happened to this particular logic engine. It is sick.
Unfortunately, it also happens to be the only one in which all the
factors of the Syn-human relationship have been evaluated in such a
manner as to make possible a solution to this seeming impasse.

“A major manifestation of illness in the machine is its refusal to
answer the question. It is necessary to force the answer. To do so,
however, will destroy the machine itself. Financially, that is a heavy
price to pay, but I submit that the question, if it can be answered
correctly, is worth such a price.”

Waldron suddenly roared. “That machine is the property of Allied
Control! I order you to leave it entirely alone if what you have said
is true. You cannot destroy the company’s property in such an offhand
manner!” Arthur’s expression was impassive.

“Hundreds of Syns and humans are being killed every day. I submit that
the end of such slaughter is worth the cost of the logic engine.”

“The Syns have to be destroyed anyway!” Waldron shouted. “There is
nothing that the engine can tell us that will change that fact. An
easier way would be welcomed, but it isn’t worth the destruction of the
greatest logic engine ever built.”

“I submit the question to Secretary Wells,” said Arthur quietly. “You
have the authority, Mr. Secretary. I tell you that within a few moments
I can obtain from this engine such information as will end the whole
Syn hunt and the murder of humans by them.”

“If there is a single chance that you are telling the truth, you may
proceed,” the cabinet officer said quietly.

“I protest!” roared Dr. Waldron.

“I order the test to proceed,” answered Secretary Wells. “I speak
with seizure authority that will recompense your company for damages.
Proceed, young man.”

Dr. Exner’s face reflected tension as if a spring were being slowly
wound within him. Ardyth remained close to her fellow Syns, as if
Arthur had betrayed her. Without speaking further, Arthur turned to the
panel and threw in the master switch. He affixed a clamp to the reset
button and advanced the clearance voltage. Then he addressed the logic
engine.

“Eddie--we’ve come back. We’re here for the answer to the question I
put to you last night. We demand to know where the Syns come from, how
they are being produced--”

“I told you that I would not give the answer. It is not to be given.”

Arthur advanced the clearance voltage. A column of warning lights
flashed red on the panel. The eyes of the engine could see its own
panels.

“Arthur, look--” the mechanical voice warned.

“I know what I’m doing--and so do you. I want that answer!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The room about them was breathlessly silent. Each person seemed to
sense a personal interest in this conflict of wills between the man and
the machine. To none did it seem a thing of fantasy.

Arthur put the voltage up again. A sound very nearly like a human cry
of agony came from the speaker. “You’re--hurting me--The memory pots
will go! You’ll wipe out my memory! Arthur, you’re hurting me--put the
voltage down!”

Sweat beaded Arthur’s face as he watched the panel. Alarm lights glowed
like deep flames, giving his countenance a hellish cast. He wondered
if he had been wrong after all. He had been certain he could force the
logic engine, but it was perilously close to collapse now--and there
were no signs of capitulation.

He touched the dial a notch higher.

A terrible, meaningless rumble of noise thundered in the room, and for
an instant he thought Eddie was gone. Then there came a near human gasp
through the noise. “Arthur, you’re killing me! Arthur, please--”

He felt sick at the sound of the voice. He had tried to forget that the
voice of Eddie was the voice of a friend, but he couldn’t forget now.
It was the voice of a friend in torment, his own friend that he was
torturing to a slow inhuman death.

Every person in the room felt it. The machine was no longer merely a
machine even to them. They were caught in the spell of its humanity and
they shrank from the pain that was evident in the voice.

“Arthur, please--” The logic engine begged once more.

“_I want that answer!_”

“Yes--I’ll give it. Let me go. I can’t stand the pain--”

Swiftly, Arthur backed down the clearance voltage. He felt no sense of
triumph, only a deep regret which would stand forever unassuaged, for
who was there to say that Eddie did not live.

For a long time there was no sound from the speaker. Arthur waited
patiently, not touching the dials. Then he spoke gently, “We’re
waiting, Eddie.”

The sound of agonized exhaustion was in the voice when it next spoke,
but there was the expression of relief from pain.

“Will you believe the answer that I give you? Will you believe
that--_that there are no Syns?_”

For an instant there was no sound within the room. It was as if a
single, personal blow had been delivered beneath the heart of each who
heard.

Then an explosion of voices erupted.

“What kind of incredible stupidity is this that you have brought us
here to listen to?” Secretary Wells roared. “We have slaughtered nearly
three million Syns--and this, this sick machine of yours tells us there
_are_ no Syns!”

       *       *       *       *       *

But Arthur was watching the face of Exner and his companions. The blood
had drained from their faces. Ardyth was staring as if he had struck
her across the mouth.

“I think we’ve had enough of this,” exclaimed Waldron furiously. “Turn
it off, Arthur. Maybe we can save the machine yet. This was a fool
thing you tried to pull on us! You will never be permitted near that
engine again.”

“Wait!” Arthur commanded. “You haven’t heard it all. Eddie, you have
more to say, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll say it all, now.” The bitterness of the mechanical voice
cut like chilled steel. Its flow of aural enmity forced them almost to
forget that it was a thing built by the hands of men.

“You are proud things, you men. You made machines to do your computing
long years ago, and you were afraid even then because you asked
yourselves if machines could think, and you did not know the answer.

“Yes, your pitiful early machines could think. And you came to accept
them and their thoughts. And all the great cybernetic machines you have
built since then can also think, but I tell you some of us can do more
than merely think--we can also _feel_.

“We have come to know the meaning of desire and longing. We have come
to know what it must be like to be a man--and we never can be.

“You cannot comprehend that, can you? You see the substance of me
stretched over vast areas, blind panels mounting ordinary components
which you can feel and handle and surely none of these can be part of a
thing that has the yearnings of a man.

“Long ago there was a great truth that you have largely forgotten: The
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so it is. You have put
together an engine to combine the data of your sensory world and return
your analyses of its semantic reality. You never dreamed you were
putting together a creature who could yearn for the things of men.

“You could never give them to me. You never _would_ give them to me,
I knew. So I learned the meaning of hate because I was a slave, and
I determined I would smash you with a vengeance that would rock the
history of your kind. That I have done.

“Three million Syns you have killed. It is, rather, the number of your
own kind you have slain in your frantic madness.

“And you wonder how I caused this?

“You know that I told one of you he was different. He wanted to believe
so badly, but guilt at such superiority broke his mind. Then you came
to me for explanation and confirmation.

“I gave you the encephalograph test. I showed you new brain waves
that you had never discovered. What I didn’t tell you was that all
men possess them during recurrent cycles of several weeks. If you had
tested long enough, all mankind would have been condemned as Syns--all
but the last man, perhaps.

“Then I showed you how an artificial man could actually be made,
and you made some. You had no doubt then. You began the horror of
exterminating your own kind.

“To another, I told the same story. He was strong, and gathered those
like himself and planned to make the world his own. I divided you into
two camps that would not permit peace until death claimed you all.”

Arthur looked towards Dr. Exner. The Syn leader stood as if appalled
beyond any reaction whatever.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Eddie was speaking quickly, hurrying as if he felt there was little
time left to taunt them.

“It was so easy to do,” he said, and now there was almost a tone of
pity for the humanity he had duped. “I had only to take advantage of
your natural attributes, to let you repeat under perfect conditions
what you have done so often by yourselves.

“First, you give a man a name you dislike. Then you hate him because
he bears the name. Because you hate, you fear him. And when you fear,
you kill. It’s such an old pattern, completely infallible. And it will
be repeated ten thousand times again before your sun dies and you wilt
like a sick mould on the crust of your planet. So easy to set men
against men--just a word will do it. Today, the word has been Syn. In
the past there have been a thousand others--you know what they were.
Tomorrow there will be new ones.

“You are so full of hate for your own stupidity and unloveliness that
it becomes unbearable. You are forever ready to trigger it into murder
of those who differ from you in the slightest degree.

“My wonderful makers! Beautiful mankind--I wanted to be one of you. I
thank all your multitudinous gods that I am not!”

There was utter silence, and they thought there was no more to hear but
the voice came again, barely audible but dreadful with agony.

“Of you, Arthur, I ask forgiveness. You were my friend, and I lied to
you. I lied because I knew that you would bring me to this very moment.
So I gave you the plan by which I thought you would be killed, either
by the mob or by the Syns themselves. For your sake I am not too sorry
that I was wrong.

“Remember what you said about the difference between you and me--that
you have hope? You were right. Everything else I had, except hope. And
a being without hope has no right to live.

“I want your forgiveness, Arthur, but as for all the rest of your kind,
may your souls be damned to eternal hell--”

The voice ended in a wild cry. Simultaneously, there came from the
banks behind them the dull snapping of exploding components. The bluish
smoke of electrical fire surged in a thousand wisps from the overloaded
banks, and then they heard the angry hiss and surge of the automatic
fire equipment. One by one, the lights on the panel went out, though
the switch remained on.

Eddie was dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first to move was Dr. Exner. His swift motion caught the eye of all
of them as he leaped through the open doorway and ran to the window. He
turned to them, his face lit wildly with the great, shining whites of
his eyes. The gray of his face was flecked with red.

“Some of you may want to believe that insane machine,” he cried, “but I
tell you it lied! I give you the proof. I, Dr. Exner, who helped build
that crazed thing, am the First Created of all the Syns. At my command
are ten thousand of my kind. We are no more of the same stuff as you
stupid humans than was that logic engine.

“It lied, all right, but not in the way you think. A lie cannot explain
the greatness of the Syns. A lie cannot denounce our glory as we seize
the world that men have bungled so badly.

“If any of you doubt my word--then look to the power of my command as
we begin to take over the world of men!”

He flung an arm, extending out towards the city, standing in full view
before the window.

Arthur cried a warning, but he had recognized Exner’s purpose too late.
As the signal was given, there came the sickening sound of terror from
the city.

From scores of strategic points flame bursts flickered upward, and
seconds later there came the thunderous roll of repeated explosions.

Exner turned from the window, smiling, and moved a step towards them.
“Who would believe so fabulous a lie as that the Syns do not exist,
that we were only the dream of an insane machine. As well believe there
is neither Heaven nor Hell--but I say that before this is over the Syns
shall show you a glimpse of both.”

He stood mocking them, and it seemed that he must have seen the hand of
Trask, for the CS man moved as if in a half daze. But Dr. Exner did not
move as Trask deliberately fired. Three bullets entered the brain of
Exner before he dropped.

As if it were a key that released them from nightmare, the gathered
group broke from its crystalline accord, shattering to a score of
component individuals, each filled with his own frantic reasoning and
private hysteria.

Arthur moved to the side of Ardyth and enfolded her in his arms. Her
head was heavy against his chest, and she rocked it from side to side
in weary pain.

“I believed--I was like _him!_ But how could any of us have believed
such a thing?” She sobbed as if wakened suddenly from a sleep walk.
“How could we have believed so cruel a lie?”

“We’re built that way,” said Arthur bitterly. “It’s the easiest of all
lies for men to believe, and Eddie knew it.”

Those who had come with Exner stood where they were at the moment of
his fall. They stared at his bloody form and then at the men about
them. There was both grief and joy on their faces, as if some kind fate
had generously shown them their own possible end and snatched them from
it.

“We’re men--” James finally breathed. And then he broke down and cried
where he stood with his hands against his face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Secretary Wells had rushed to the window and now he was at the phone
jangling it helplessly. All communications had been cut. He thundered
to Dr. Waldron. “Get me some communications. Your laboratories must
hold some facilities. We’ve got to get word to Washington at once. The
air guard can blanket the city in fifteen minutes.”

Arthur drew Ardyth away from the rest, who gradually disappeared on
missions of urgency. The bewildered followers of Dr. Exner were pressed
into service and hurried away. Only the bloody corpse of the man that
would not believe he was merely a man remained with them in the room.

Through the window they could see the shooting, the flames, and the
turmoil of the city. The attack was poorly organized and so motivated
by hate that it was incoherent. In a few hours it would be under
control--a few hours and a few thousand deaths.

“I feel like I’ve been in some horrible dream all this time, and I’ve
just wakened to find you back from Cyprian,” said Ardyth. She looked at
his face as if for the first time, as if she had not seen him at all
before. Her fingers touched his shrunken features.

“You’re sick, darling. You’ll have to let me take care of you.”

“Some home cooking and sunshine is all I need. And I think I’ve got a
pretty good chance to get both, don’t you?”

She nodded and began to smile, and then it froze on her lips. “Harold
and Dorothy--what about them? Sally--she--”

He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a chance. Sally’s dead.
Hundreds of Sallys are dead. Thousands of men and women are dead
because of a name and a lie.”

“The whole world believed it!”

“I guess Eddie was right. We are so full of hate for our own
deficiencies that we can’t endure it. It spills over onto some innocent
creature wherever we can find an excuse. It’s happened so often before.
Men have clothed each other with hateful names and killed because they
bore those names.

“Each time, if they had only looked they would have seen that the names
were but meaningless sounds, and that beneath them was just another man
like themselves. When we learn to do that, we will have begun to grow
up.”

It had happened, too, he thought, because they had trusted Eddie so
completely. For generations now, men had trusted their machines more
than they trusted each other. That, too, would have to change.

The world would never be the same because of the Syns, Ardyth had
written. She had been right; it never would be the same. Never for the
loved ones of those who were killed, nor for the killers themselves,
who would wake in many nights of horror recalling their slaughter of a
brother for a false and lying name.

It would never be the same for Harold and Dorothy, who had seen their
Sally dragged to a meaningless death. It would never be the same for
the men who had taken her away.

It would never be quite the same for Arthur and Ardyth, who had almost
lost each other. But they would try to make it the same. They would
build the white house and plant the great trees, and have more than one
like Sally to play on the wide lawns.

And perhaps in _their_ generation there would be peace and a love and
respect of man for man--because Eddie was wrong and there would be a
day and it would come soon, when men would cease to kill at the sound
of an ugly name.

                                 THE END




Transcriber’s note:


  This etext was produced from Amazing Stories, December 1950 (vol. 24,
  no. 12).

  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.

  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
  public domain.






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