by Douglas R. Mason
The enquiring female mind is often enough to drive a man to the edge of frustration—but that is when he usually makes his most interesting discoveries.
* * * *
Light was faint in the east. A pallid bar, which came briefly and was drowned out. An uneasy pallor lost as the black tide flowed again. Etiolated echo of the infinity of dawns which had blazed and gone.
No human consciousness made its heartbeats the measure of the time it took to turn. There was no time. Only a slow separation. But light grew, gathered in the countless million lenses of an inert atmosphere. A notional eye would have seen a small grey planet troubled and tortured by rebirth.
The seas had not entirely died. Tiny, rod-like organisms stirred in their depths, felt the warmth of the light and exploded into productive life. The spiral screw began to turn once more which in the term of years measured by an atomic clock would throw up a conscious mind.
Dragged by its heavier neighbour into the long orbit round the new sun, a satellite moon took its share of light. On the parent planet, life complicated itself. Cells burgeoned, divided, became specific in function. Life crawled ashore again from the ancient seas. Forests rose and sank. The planet’s raddled skin expanded in the new heat, threw up new mountains, ran its oceans to new shores.
Out of the dialectic came man. Conscious of a new now and carrying his ancestry in a sealed bag in his head, an unsuspected handicap.
* * * *
An immense plain of yellow-ochre sand streaked with white patches of granulated marble was brilliantly lit from a huge fire-wheel of sun, almost vertically overhead. Zara only recognized that the reflection made her eyes ache and that the heat was beating down on her polished, cobalt-blue skin with a tangible depressive weight.
She called out, “Kaalba, Kaalba,” in a deep, throaty voice, which was projected by the sounding board of sheer cliff at her back and rolled, echoing, over the flat beach.
Far off, at the indeterminate edge of the sea, a diminished figure, shimmering in the heat haze, turned and waved both arms in acknowledgement and then bent again to continue whatever he was doing.
Zara’s large, expressive eyes narrowed with impatience and the first real irritability she had shown since they left the clan. In substance, without the form of words, she was thinking, “The fool, he must know that I meant him to stop and come to meet me. I know he’s there, and he knows I know he’s there. So why wave ? It is to assert that whatever he is doing is more important to him than I am.”
Standing still for this analysis, in the stupefying heat, she felt it flow along the curves of her body like heavy syrup. Except for a narrow, plaited thong of yellow snakeskin, circling low on her hips and anchoring a minimal loop of red cloth, it had an uninterrupted, switchback run.
They had reached this open plain and its boundary of sea after twenty days’ journeying through the forest. Usually, two people on their proving time stayed near the clan. A day’s distance away, just out of range of the farthest-roaming hunter or food-gatherer. But Kaalba had decided that they would be different. With a hundred days to fill, he said they should go out in a straight line until they had counted fifty days or found some great marvel—whichever was the sooner.
Still, she could hardly complain about that. It was his quality of being different which had made her agree to be his partner. She could have had any of the young men of their age group. Or, indeed, any of the unpaired elders. No other woman in the clan had received more formal requests. No one had such luminously black hair, such velvet skin, round breasts and long slender legs. Almost as tall as Kaalba, she walked with a queen’s grace and as a bonus was skilled in all the work which a woman should do.
Trudging sulkily forward towards him, she told herself that she must have been mesmerized by words and by his quick, eager voice. Why had she come ? He was not really good-looking, even. Just persuasive. Getting his way by a gift of the gab.
For days they had walked together, not a handsbreadth ahead or behind the other. Hand in hand, through the endless forest. At night, Kaalba had made a booth of saplings, working with neat economical strokes of his obsidian axe. She had gathered bracken and moss for their bed.
Food almost fell into their outstretched hands, curious fruits, edible fungi, the tender tips of certain bushes. It was her special contribution to know what was good and what was not. There was precedent of a whole clan being wiped out by injudicious sampling.
That was something, too. She stopped again to think about it. There was the river fish which was good to eat if you took off its skin and removed the roe, ovaries and liver. Leave any one of these items by careless preparation and you handed your guest a certain and painful death. That was a mystery. However did anyone find out that it was good to eat since the first person to try would surely be killed? Somebody like Kaalba no doubt. He would find a way round it. She would ask him.
He was thigh deep in clear water, axe raised and then chopping down at a grey mass which was in a churning turmoil. As she said, “Kaalba,” the duel ended, and a grey hemisphere floated up to the surface.
Kaalba, stocky, powerful, with the broad high forehead of a thinker, began to wade ashore towing his catch by a stumpy, reptilian tail.
“Kaalba.”
“What is it?”
He had found out in the last twenty days that it was not all bliss to be alone with the beautiful Zara. It was not her endless questioning so much; because he liked explaining things to her, but the assumption that he was there present for that purpose. A kind of chief minister, court chamberlain.
She had managed to keep their love-making on a slightly analytical level, as though it was one more thing that a girl ought to know about.
“Why did you run on and leave me?”
“Why do you always answer a question with another question?”
“Do I?”
“Help me to drag this animal ashore.”
“Is it an animal? Isn’t it a fish?”
“Living creature then. Just pull.”
In the shallow water, it was harder to move. Although it was small, it was very compact. Three-quarters of a sphere, on a flattened base an arm’s length across; almost the weight of a man. When it was stranded in a hand’s depth of water, they were ready to squat back on their heels and rest.
Zara said, “What will you do with this fish ? It has a very hard shell and how can we tell if it is good to eat? I expect it would taste like a lizard, if you could get at the meat, which you can not.”
“Help me to turn it over.”
When the dome of the shell was in the water, he began to chip at the base with his axe and Zara lost interest. She walked farther on until the water reached her waist, then she plunged forward and began to swim with a powerful, overarm stroke.
Totally preoccupied with his task, he did not see her circle round and then drift down towards him, floating on her back and watching three white birds wheeling and gliding against the distant cliff.
The first clue that she was once more in his midst came from behind his knees. A voice saying, “It is easier to swim here than in the river. Why is that?”
Kaalba checked a down stroke which might have ended her chat for all time and looked at her. Hair a shining black skull-cap, emphasizing the proportions of her oval face, water glistening on her skin like blue jewels.
He said, “Where there is nothing, a stone will fall easily; where there is solid ground, it will rest. Between the one and the other, there is a range of thickness. This water is thicker than river water and does more to prevent you falling through it.”
“Why is it that you always have an answer?”
“I do not always have an answer, but so far you have not framed the questions which I cannot answer.”
“What are they?”
“How can I know that ?”
“You are laughing at me.”
“And nobody should laugh at the beautiful Zara?”
Her heels had grounded in soft sand, so she sat up and changed the topic.
“What are you going to do with that shell?”
Kaalba had cut neatly round the thick base and levered it off. He had severed thick sinewy tissue which held the body in its house. Now he was ready to tip the mess out. When he did so, the sea was stained red and Zara moved away in disgust.
“Do you have to do that?”
“Now we have a large, empty vessel. Very strong. There are many uses for such a thing.”
“What for instance?”
“Not just now perhaps. But in the clan. We are expected to take back with us one beautiful thing and one useful thing. Since the most beautiful thing there is, came with me out of the clan, I shall have difficulty with the first; but this could well do as the second.”
“That was a nice thing to say. Now I know why I agreed to come with you.”
“Were you still in doubt?”
It was a rhetorical question. He knew in his heart that the answer was “Yes”. But she did not make an overt statement of it and as he knelt beside his shell, scooping water into it with both hands, she joined him, suddenly good humoured. Even began to prod out some remaining fragments of flesh with a sharp, narrow-bladed knife from her belt.
Now it was light enough to carry and they walked out of the sea on to a bar of white sand.
“But what can you use it for?”
“Water storage. Grain. A mortar. A cradle.” He rocked it experimentally. “It may turn out to be a beautiful and a useful thing. I can bore holes along the rim and fit thongs as handles. Then we can carry it between us.”
“Meanwhile it is very awkward.”
“Meanwhile we should choose our place for tonight. In fact for several nights, because we have gone as far as we can go in a straight line and we have also found our marvel.”
Facing them, the cliff became a wall as they approached. Higher than the tallest tree in the forest. It was amazing now that they had found a way down it. Their route showed as a pale zig-zag against the brown stone face. It stretched away left and right in an unbroken line until the curves of the headland took it away out of sight.
Zara said, “What is that black shadow over there?” Her outstretched arm was vividly modelled, blue velvet against sand and cliff. Looking along it, he found that he was looking at it and was distracted.
When he did not answer she stopped suddenly and the clumsy shell dropped to the sand between them. Her eyes were all pale gold iris with the pupils narrowed to a point against the glare.
“You’re not looking.”
“I prefer to look at you.”
“Oh that.” She was indifferent about her own image, being used to it and not yet moved to be glad that he should care about it. Recognizing that it was so, Kaalba shaded his eyes and looked more closely at the cliff.
“It is an opening. Dark where the light can not reach. A place to stay, if we can get to it.”
“It looks no harder than the way we came down.”
* * * *
Inside the cave it was cool. They sat just inside the shade line and looked out over a greater distance than they had ever imagined to the far horizon. The shell was against one wall chocked between stones and half-filled with clear water.
Saplings and bracken and moss were heaped ready to make a bed. Fruits, birds’ eggs and the carcase of a small tree bear filled the larder. Wood for a cooking fire. Their own possessions—Kaalba’s blowpipe and pouch of small deadly darts tipped with a paralysing nerve poison; his flint striker to make fire; Zara’s multi-link necklace of red, yellow and green stones which she would wear again when they made their ceremonial re-entry to their village.
It was unusually quiet in the cave. Even granted that they were in a kind of acoustic booth, which shielded them from the familiar clatter of the forest above. Only a faint, rhythmic swaying sound—as regular as breathing—from the sea directly ahead.
The silence was almost oppressive and Kaalba moved uneasily to the cave mouth. Up above, the forest had in fact gone still.
Zara said, “You should be very grateful that I found this cave, it will save you a lot of work, and we shall be more comfortable here than in a shelter.”
It was a strong position and one likely to remain as a lifelong talking point, if not rigorously undermined from the outset. As if on cue, dissent came on a cosmic scale and Kaalba was some seconds before he recognized that he would survive to benefit.
The floor of the cave lurched suddenly to the left in a spasm of activity, which he saw was carried in a deep-moving wave across the sand and into the sea. This picture he carried with him as a mental still as he slid back and joined the trash pile brought up against an inner wall.
He could only blame himself. Twice in the span of their memory, similar phenomena had disrupted the clan’s living space. Earth tremors had shattered every house in the village with corresponding havoc in the surrounding forests. In this confined space it was infinitely more threatening. But no serious damage was done. Zara was sitting among the rubble of sticks and food, dazed but seemingly unharmed
From the depths of the cave there was a grinding rumble which reached a period with a flat, percussive smack, as though a slab had fallen from a great height on to a flat threshing floor. Air rushed out of the tunnel, dust-filled, carrying small fragments of debris.
Thinking that part of the roof was breaking away, Kaalba heaved himself clear in a total concentration of strength and swung Zara from where she was, until she was between himself and the firm wall and shielded by his own body.
As much as anything the sheer power of this move surprised her, and the overwhelming force of the grip which continued to hold her so that she could not move. It was indeed the first time in her experience that she had been so constrained to do something without being consulted, and though it was patently intended to be in her own interest, in a confused way, it seemed to be a kind of betrayal.
“You’re hurting me.”
Large golden-brown eyes, very wide open, very close. Foreheads touched flatly, warm and smooth, as he pushed her head back against the wall with his own. Before he released her, he suddenly moved and kissed her lips.
“You’re still hurting me.” But this time the voice was softer and uncertain. Illusions are the hardest thing to give up, but her armour of self-sufficiency had been given a shrewd knock.
Kaalba helped her to her feet. The ground was steady now and there was no sound from the depths of the cave. From the forest, a muted clatter had started up as though an all-clear had been given. Brilliant light showed up a hanging dust cloud. Rhythmic surge from the distant sea. Except for the litter on the cave floor, it might have been a shared hallucination.
Zara said, “You will have to make a shelter in the forest after all. I am sorry. It was not a very good idea.”
Such generosity deserved to be met.
“It will not happen again.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“It never happens twice together. Now we know that this place will be safe for many days. It was a very good idea.”
Challenge, however, was in the air. From the depths of the cave, out of sight, round a syphon-like bend came the amplified sound of further movement. Drag and stop, scrabble, slide and stop. Some self-mobile thing was coming out towards them from the darkness.
Zara, who had begun to sort out the heap was back beside Kaalba in two strides. It was the first time she had turned to him instinctively for protection and the significance of it was more important to him than his own fear of what was about to happen. He had sudden insight into the wisdom of the idea of this proving time. A hundred days was bound to throw up circumstances which would make the partners recognize their dependence on each other and set them in a right relationship.
He said aloud, “Whatever it is, it is coming very slowly. Dig out my blowpipe.”
When she had found it, he said, “Now go out on to the path and wait.”
“I will stay with you.”
It was said as an appeal rather than a contradiction.
“As you will.”
They went back to the entrance and stood flat against the wall, so that the light went past them down the bend. Movement quickened as though its maker was gaining strength.
Looking along the wall at the height of a man’s head, they missed its first appearance. When Zara said, “What is it?” in a voice riddled with angst, it was already in full view. A grey shape, dragging itself along the floor, like a moving shadow. Now they could distinguish that it had in some measure the shape of a man.
It had stopped in the light and Kaalba had the feeling that it was absorbing light, drinking it in like liquid food. Zara began to tremble against his arm as it began to move again. Fascination with what he was seeing made him forget the blowpipe and the dart, poised ready to fly.
Slowly, the shape separated itself out. First, it was on all fours; head weaving from side to side like a stunned man. Then it sat back on its haunches. Rising to full height, taller than Kaalba by a head, it filled the cave from, floor to ceiling. Perfectly proportioned, smooth as polished obsidian. Such a man as they had never imagined.
It was clear enough that, under their film of dust, those limbs owed nothing to flesh and blood. They were nearest in texture to Kaalba’s shell.
Zara said, “Look at its head.”
She had a point. It was a smooth ovoid structure, bland, hairless, pale silver below the dust. No mouth or nose or ears destroyed the continuity of line. Set where eyes should be were palm-sized disks, glowing with changing colour as their photo-chromatic crystals altered composition in the strengthening light and filtered its intake of energy.
As she spoke, the head turned to the sound. It saw them and stood still. There was a strange wait to a count of five and then it spoke.
No visible movement identified a source of sound, but it appeared to come from the head. Faintly at first, then gathering strength. A deep, melodious tone, incomprehensible; but with the unmistakable, rising inflexion of a question, repeated again and again, followed by a short statement as though it was identifying itself. Eye-disks rippled with changing colour and glowed now as though they had collected enough light to make them an outgoing force.
It stretched out its hands palms upward in the eternal mime of non-aggression.
Kaalba took a decision. He stepped forward and spoke, “I am Kaalba. This is Zara. What do you want? Where have you come from ? Who are you ?”
The words came back like an echo, “I am Kaalba....” in a voice of such timbre, that their language seemed more musical and full of subtlety than they had believed.
Gathering confidence, Zara spoke and the eyes watched her in a ceaseless flux of colour and pattern. Her words were repeated. Then the figure took time off for thought. In its indestructible core, millions of circuits were dredging up their mites of learning, whipping them along in nanoseconds for the attention of its computer mind. Data suggested an immense passage of time. Here was a new and unfamiliar species. Near enough though for recognition to the pattern of man. The woman’s voice had a tone almost exactly that of the briefing clerk who had dictated behaviour codes into his frontal bands.
However, these two seemed harmless enough. In any event, they could be no threat. There was no need to make any demonstration of force by using the laser tube in the middle finger of his left hand. Self-consciously aware that it was a shade theatrical, he went to Zara and inclined his head. Then he knelt down in token of submission. There was precedent enough in his fiction bank for this courtly gesture and he had no reason to be dissatisfied with its effect.
Zara said, “Look, Kaalba. It’s deferring to me. Isn’t that wonderful ? This will be the most amazing thing that anyone has ever taken back to the clan. I shall call it, Tros.”
When it began to repeat her words, she said sharply, “Stop doing that.” The voice cut off, but there was a feeling that the repetition was still going on, just below the threshold of audibility.
* * * *
Five days later, they had their first two-way conversation. Cleaned of dust, sparkling in the bright light, a smooth shell of an unknown and beautiful metal, Tros accepted his name and followed them like a patient dog, listening to every word they spoke. When it had heard enough and was stocked with the requisite number of identified speech units, its computers went into action and gave it a translation key.
Zara was standing at the cliff edge, looking over the sea to the distant horizon. The sun was a white glare. Tros had cut down intake of light and his eye-disks were opaque plates of pale gold. He stood a pace to the rear like a respectable retainer. She said, “In the forest, we could never see as far into the distance as the eye could reach, except into the sky where nothing is. Looking out here, the sea curves away to left and right. Why is that, Kaalba?”
Tros, now ready to get into the act, said, “It is because the surface of the planet is curved. It is a sphere. You are seeing an arc.” He went on at some length, glad to break his infinity of silence. Using the limited vocabulary in a way which would have delighted the technocrat who had designed him.
The voice was well-modulated and deferential; but carried utter conviction, although what it said was an unbelievable thing. Zara said, “Did you hear that, Kaalba? Isn’t Tros clever ? Now all my questions can be answered.”
Kaalba only wanted the answer to one, which was how to switch the man off. He saw only that he was likely to be displaced in the one field where Zara had turned to him and at a time when she had seemed about to step from behind her self-preoccupation and move towards him. On a wider issue, he was also aware that this smooth-speaking, tin man could be a serious menace.
This last he saw at first on a psychological level though he would not have so identified it. A feeling that to be told every answer would undermine the very foundations of his mind. Almost immediately, there was supporting evidence that even on practical grounds it could be dangerous.
Mainly herbivores, the big animals of the forest were not a great threat to man. Only one in their experience constituted an ever-present threat. Even though a well-placed dart could settle his hash, he was always ready to have a go. Pea-brained and vicious, a semi-reptile, twice a man’s height, blood-flecked eyes and permanently slavering mouth.
One such had moved silently from the edge of the forest and was near enough to poke with a long stick when Zara sensed danger and turned to look. Kaalba had a moment to think that even here Tros had been a danger; because thoughts about him had inhibited the free play of instinct.
He should have been more alert. His blow pipe was down below in the cave. He stretched out an arm to grab Zara and make a run for it when Tros got the adrenalin-loaded message.
Not triggered for safety-seeking flight like its flesh and blood counterparts, Tros took two paces towards the towering monster and pointed at it with his left hand like a helpful guide.
Silence erupted in a roar which was just as abruptly cut off when an invisible axe sliced through horn and bone and flesh and bisected its vibrating voice-box. It peeled apart in a welter of blubber and gut into two throbbing red mounds.
Zara, poised to run, felt a deflating sense of anticlimax. Danger brushed aside with such contempt was humiliating. She said uncertainly, “How did you do that?”
“I can send out a thread of light, which moves so fast that it can cut through anything”.”
“Will it cut stone?”
“Yes.”
Tros pointed at a boulder and a line of chipping appeared on its face.
Zara was treating him as a flesh and blood person. She said, “Well, thank you, anyway. That was a very dangerous beast.”
Kaalba, with sensibility heightened by the crisis, saw that it had been killed by a potentially more dangerous one; but he kept the reflection in his own head. Even then the great golden eye-disks were turned speculatively on him as though something of this thought had been picked up.
From that moment on, Tros and Zara were left alone much more and Kaalba sought seclusion to think this thing out. When present, he listened with growing alarm to the answers Zara was getting to her never-ending questions.
Stored in Tros’s memory banks was all the unimaginable detail of a vanished culture, which diminished them indeed to the status of a poor, forked animal. Marvels too many to digest. Tros had no personal reticence and ran through his own statistics with the same objective thoroughness. He was the ultimate in androids, requiring only light to give him power. Virtually indestructible. More completely stocked with information than any one of the men who had created him.
Certainly it would be valuable for the clan to have such a source of knowledge. Though much of it was as remote and extravagant as fable. Immense cities, space probes, power from plasma. Rationalizing, in the human mind’s constant effort to think well of itself, Kaalba thought, “But these clever men could only live and then die. Their wars were terrible. All that movement made no one happier, in itself.”
When Tros regurgitated an account of a particularly long and hazardous expedition to a far planet, Kaalba asked, “What did they do when they got there, which they could not have done on this planet ?”
For the first time Tros was disconcerted, and after a digestive pause said, “Repeat the question.”
Repetition, however, was no help. Except that it proved that he had heard it correctly. Finally, he said, “I do not know,” with uneasy, avoiding motions of his head, and Kaalba scored himself a palpable hit.
That night, when light level had fallen and Tros was lying in the cave like a stone figure on a catafalque, Kaalba took Zara outside.
“This android is no good for our people. We must not take him back.”
“You are jealous, because he knows more than you do. Of course we will take him back.”
“It may be that in the time to come our people will also do the things he speaks about. But it is not good to know in advance. It must come slowly. Step by step. Indeed I doubt whether it is wise to go that way at all. What more did knowledge bring them than is possible for us? Knowledge in itself is nothing. It is the gathering of it which is important. Discovering is more important than discovery. Short cuts will decrease opportunity for our people to grow in stature and understanding to match the new developments. They would raise a structure that they could not inhabit. Besides, nothing will ever be more beautiful than you are. Being with you is potentially as great a pleasure as any reasonable man could want.”
“Except for the last bit which is just flattery to make me agree, I don’t know what you are talking about. Of course we will take him back. We will be the most important people in the clan.”
“In two days we must set off for the return. Then we will decide.”
“I have decided now.”
He let her have the last word. Determined in his own mind what had to be done. When Zara was turned aside to sleep, he looked across at the motionless metal figure. Very carefully, without disturbing her, he went to its side. Surely whoever had built this machine would have had means to control it?
Silver light brightened the cave mouth. Soon it would be strong enough for him to inspect the android. He carried the shell to the entrance and emptied it, then he put it over the oval head and packed leaves round to make a light seal. Then he waited.
Zara was first to be lit by the pale glare. Profile, shoulders, breasts and long smooth sides startling in silver. Then the cold perfect form of the machine. Shadows at this angle drew attention to surface detail which had been invisible in direct light. A dark line and a ring, grooves, chasing.
Kaalba pressed with sensitive fingers. Not knowing precisely what he was looking for. Nor did he know how he had done it, when, for a hand’s breadth the metal skin slid aside. In the cavity so revealed, three small protruding pegs, hinged to move downwards. It had to be something to do with control. But clearly Tros could prevent anyone touching them when he was acting under power. Not so easily, though, if the cover remained off. He took some chips of stone and wedged them between the thicknesses of metal, so that the plate could not slide back. Then he removed the leaves and the cowl and went to bed.
In the morning, he beat Zara to the question by asking Tros what was the purpose of the switches on his chest.
Tros treated it as routine and went into a prepared statement. “This small console has three switches. The left one is a complete shut down of all circuits for adjustment or maintenance. The centre one cuts out my own local control and puts me under direction by voice. The third is a delayed action sequence.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It would be possible to use me in a terminal way to destroy.” Tros stopped and seemed reluctant to amplify the bulletin.
The panel remained open. Kaalba felt that he was that much ahead of the game. He set himself to annoy Tros with silly questions which could have no answer. “How can a man pick two melons with one hand ? What will happen if a force which can not be stopped meets an object which can not be moved? How long is a piece of rope?” Childish puzzles.
Tros showed impatience and began to make random avoiding movements to escape a situation in which he was uncomfortable. In one such, he pushed against Zara and she felt all the impersonal power of his metal frame. It would have been all the same if she had been standing at the edge of the cliff. She became thoughtful.
Long neglect took its toll. Frustration tolerance was no longer adequate. Kaalba kept up the pressure. Tros’s “I do not know,” became an insane scream. Then there was frenzied movement as though a link had broken and he began to circle at random making jerky, uncoordinated arm movements.
Zara was the nearer. As though reaching a decision, he seized her and put her over his shoulder and walked to the edge of the cliff, checked momentarily and then went surefooted along the path which led to the beach below.
Contrite, Kaalba would have gone back on his decision if this would have made her safe. Then he realized that even this he would not do. There was importance in this issue that transcended even the importance of Zara to him or even of him to himself. It was a moment of truth which conferred a kind of freedom.
It did not mean, however, that he would not hazard himself to help her. Tros, looking neither left nor right, was marching on towards the sea at a pace twice that of a walking man. Kaalba struck a jog-trot which brought him a man’s length behind and hung on. If Tros felt threatened, he might use his annihilating light. There might only be one chance. He could not afford to fail.
Zara had stopped struggling and lay inert over the smooth metal shoulder, arms hanging limp, hair straight down, black silk over silver steel. Kaalba pressed forward and shouted another question in the notional ear, “How long will it take ?”
Tros hesitated in his stride, aware that the data was incomplete and forced by the logic of his construction to ask for more. Then as the head came round and the golden eye-disks identified the questioner, a circuit on the blink went into a flutter and threw him on to the short easy answer of violence. His free left arm came round in an arc with a line of sand kicking up as the laser beam sliced out.
Leaving it to the last second and with a kind of exaltation in that he knew that he could win, Kaalba threw himself out of the path of the invisible axe and ran in to the right. As Tros attempted to twist his head off to follow the target, the man had gathered strength, in a total concentration of effort, and sprung to close the gap and throw the key in the open chest cavity.
Tros stopped like a method actor in training and Zara slipped to the sand. Kaalba lifted her clear. Then without giving himself time for thought, he slipped the middle switch to local control and the right-hand one to delayed action sequence. Before putting Tros back into action he went over to Zara who was sitting up and watching him with enormous eyes.
“Move back to the cliff before I do the next thing.”
“Why?”
“Never mind, ‘Why?’ Do as I say.”
“I will stay here with you.”
“Do as I say.”
For a long count, Zara looked at him and he met the golden-brown gaze without heat, almost without interest in his new freedom of spirit. She could only see determination.
When she lowered her eyes and said in a small voice, “Very well,” he was touched to the heart.
When she was starting up the path, he threw the last switch and as Tros straightened himself up, he said clearly, “You are to go straight ahead into the water. Go forward and do not stop until your destructor mechanism is activated.”
Tros was erect and still and repeated the instruction. Then he began to walk.
From the top of the cliff, they watched him wade out and finally disappear.
Zara said, “Will the water cut off the light ?”
“Not until it gets very deep.”
A column of water rising from the sea and reaching far above the level of their heads made a period. There was a roar of following sound and a damp gust of flung spray.
Zara was standing close and put her arm tentatively round Kaalba’s waist. Then her head was warm silk against his shoulder.
He picked her up and began to carry her down the path to their cave.
* * * *