She did not answer.
* * * * *
He awakened with the public newscaster screeching in his ears, shouting
outside the building.
"Special news bulletin! Surface forces report enormous Soviet attack
with new weapons! Retreat of key groups! All work units report to
factories at once!"
Taylor blinked, rubbing his eyes. He jumped out of bed and hurried to
the vidphone. A moment later he was put through to Moss.
"Listen," he said. "What about this new attack? Is the project off?" He
could see Moss's desk, covered with reports and papers.
"No," Moss said. "We're going right ahead. Get over here at once."
"But--"
"Don't argue with me." Moss held up a handful of surface bulletins,
crumpling them savagely. "This is a fake. Come on!" He broke off.
Taylor dressed furiously, his mind in a daze.
Half an hour later, he leaped from a fast car and hurried up the stairs
into the Synthetics Building. The corridors were full of men and women
rushing in every direction. He entered Moss's office.
"There you are," Moss said, getting up immediately. "Franks is waiting
for us at the outgoing station."
They went in a Security Car, the siren screaming. Workers scattered out
of their way.
"What about the attack?" Taylor asked.
Moss braced his shoulders. "We're certain that we've forced their hand.
We've brought the issue to a head."
They pulled up at the station link of the Tube and leaped out. A moment
later they were moving up at high speed toward the first stage.
They emerged into a bewildering scene of activity. Soldiers were
fastening on lead suits, talking excitedly to each other, shouting back
and forth. Guns were being given out, instructions passed.
Taylor studied one of the soldiers. He was armed with the dreaded Bender
pistol, the new snub-nosed hand weapon that was just beginning to come
from the assembly line. Some of the soldiers looked a little frightened.
"I hope we're not making a mistake," Moss said, noticing his gaze.
Franks came toward them. "Here's the program. The three of us are going
up first, alone. The soldiers will follow in fifteen minutes."
"What are we going to tell the leadys?" Taylor worriedly asked. "We'll
have to tell them something."
"We want to observe the new Soviet attack." Franks smiled ironically.
"Since it seems to be so serious, we should be there in person to
witness it."
"And then what?" Taylor said.
"That'll be up to them. Let's go."
* * * * *
In a small car, they went swiftly up the Tube, carried by anti-grav
beams from below. Taylor glanced down from time to time. It was a long
way back, and getting longer each moment. He sweated nervously inside
his suit, gripping his Bender pistol with inexpert fingers.
Why had they chosen him? Chance, pure chance. Moss had asked him to come
along as a Department member. Then Franks had picked him out on the spur
of the moment. And now they were rushing toward the surface, faster and
faster.
A deep fear, instilled in him for eight years, throbbed in his mind.
Radiation, certain death, a world blasted and lethal--
Up and up the car went. Taylor gripped the sides and closed his eyes.
Each moment they were closer, the first living creatures to go above the
first stage, up the Tube past the lead and rock, up to the surface. The
phobic horror shook him in waves. It was death; they all knew that.
Hadn't they seen it in the films a thousand times? The cities, the sleet
coming down, the rolling clouds--
"It won't be much longer," Franks said. "We're almost there. The surface
tower is not expecting us. I gave orders that no signal was to be sent."
The car shot up, rushing furiously. Taylor's head spun; he hung on, his
eyes shut. Up and up....
The car stopped. He opened his eyes.
They were in a vast room, fluorescent-lit, a cavern filled with
equipment and machinery, endless mounds of material piled in row after
row. Among the stacks, leadys were working silently, pushing trucks and
handcarts.
"Leadys," Moss said. His face was pale. "Then we're really on the
surface."
The leadys were going back and forth with equipment moving the vast
stores of guns and spare parts, ammunition and supplies that had been
brought to the surface. And this was the receiving station for only one
Tube; there were many others, scattered throughout the continent.
Taylor looked nervously around him. They were really there, above
ground, on the surface. This was where the war was.
"Come on," Franks said. "A B-class guard is coming our way."
* * * * *
They stepped out of the car. A leady was approaching them rapidly. It
coasted up in front of them and stopped, scanning them with its
hand-weapon raised.
"This is Security," Franks said. "Have an A-class sent to me at once."
The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across
the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around.
"Obey!" Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. "You've been ordered!"
The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building,
a door slid back. Two A-class leadys appeared, coming slowly toward
them. Each had a green stripe across its front.
"From the Surface Council," Franks whispered tensely. "This is above
ground, all right. Get set."
The two leadys approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close
by the men, looking them up and down.
"I'm Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to--"
"This in incredible," one of the leadys interrupted him coldly. "You
know you can't live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You
can't possibly remain on the surface."
"These suits will protect us," Franks said. "In any case, it's not your
responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can
acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be
arranged?"
"You human beings can't survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is
directed at this area. It is in considerable danger."
"We know that. Please assemble the Council." Franks looked around him at
the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain
quality came into his voice. "Is it night or day right now?"
"Night," one of the A-class leadys said, after a pause. "Dawn is coming
in about two hours."
Franks nodded. "We'll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession
to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can
observe the Sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it."
A stir went through the leadys.
"It is an unpleasant sight," one of the leadys said. "You've seen the
photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles
blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is
destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than
pictures and film can convey."
"However it may be, we'll stay long enough to see it. Will you give the
order to the Council?"
* * * * *
"Come this way." Reluctantly, the two leadys coasted toward the wall of
the warehouse. The three men trudged after them, their heavy shoes
ringing against the concrete. At the wall, the two leadys paused.
"This is the entrance to the Council Chamber. There are windows in the
Chamber Room, but it is still dark outside, of course. You'll see
nothing right now, but in two hours--"
"Open the door," Franks said.
The door slid back. They went slowly inside. The room was small, a neat
room with a round table in the center, chairs ringing it. The three of
them sat down silently, and the two leadys followed after them, taking
their places.
"The other Council Members are on their way. They have already been
notified and are coming as quickly as they can. Again I urge you to go
back down." The leady surveyed the three human beings. "There is no way
you can meet the conditions up here. Even we survive with some trouble,
ourselves. How can you expect to do it?"
The leader approached Franks.
"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what
you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here--"
"We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at
least until sunrise."
"If you insist."
There was silence. The leadys seemed to be conferring with each other,
although the three men heard no sound.
"For your own good," the leader said at last, "you must go back down. We
have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong
thing for your own good."
"We are human beings," Franks said sharply. "Don't you understand? We're
men, not machines."
"That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all
surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for
over fifty more minutes. Therefore--"
The leadys moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming
a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon,
his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal
figures.
"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must
take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry,
but it is necessary."
"What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun.
"Shall we blast them?"
Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go
back."
* * * * *
He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They
looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadys followed
them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube
entrance, none of them speaking.
[Illustration]
At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice.
There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if--"
"Here comes the car," Taylor said.
There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadys moved toward the
edge to receive it.
"I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are
watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the
war. In a sense, it has come to be _our_ war. We must fight it as we see
fit."
The car rose to the surface.
Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and
surrounded the three men.
Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came
off just right."
The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them
intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up
its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadys. They coasted aside
and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse.
"Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is
evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These
soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully
prepared."
"Very carefully," Franks said.
They closed in.
"How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken
unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be
absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because
of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the
war demands--"
The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee,
firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides
D- and B-class leadys were rushing up, some with weapons, some with
metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was
screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated
from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies.
"They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff.
They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a
leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember
that."
* * * * *
They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with
the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor
had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching
wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers
strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on
his arm, a metal foot. He cried out.
Then it was over. The leadys were moving away, gathering together off to
one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were
radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadys were already restoring
order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing
them.
Franks breathed a shuddering sigh.
"All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be
long now."
The leadys separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks and Taylor
and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They
entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the
blackness of the windows.
"Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not
in here."
A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling
them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other
uneasily.
"Come on," Franks said. "Outside."
He walked out through the door, the others following him.
They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly,
against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming
tangible.
"It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He
shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's
worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if
it's the last thing we see--"
"Watch," Franks snapped.
They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each
moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed.
"A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?"
Behind them, the leadys had come out and were standing silently,
watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more
clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them.
"God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed.
Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads
winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them.
"Look!" Moss whispered.
Color came into the sky. The Sun was approaching. Birds began to sing.
Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind.
Franks turned to the row of leadys behind them.
"Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the
surface--"
"Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased.
You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up
guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up."
"But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below.
"Why?"
* * * * *
"You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the war for you, while you
human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we
could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what
its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose,
except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.
"We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through
phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to
lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to
cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to
retain the old with as little change as possible.
"At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to
engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital
traditions may be lost--not merely altered or reformed, but completely
destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such
examples in the history of mankind.
"It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed
outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may
survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is
absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will
continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within
him."