of his position coming back to sober him. But then he once more burst out giggling; the situation was too ridiculous.
“What is life?” he said at last. “I’ll tell you. Life is a great grim grayness, and it inflicts fright and pain and loneliness upon all who experience it. And you want to know how to destroy it? Well, I don’t think you can. But I’ll tell you the best way to fight life—with laughter. As long as we can fight it that way, it can’t overcome us.”
The machine asked: “Must I laugh, to prevent this great-grim-grayness from enveloping me?”
The jester thought. ”No, you are a machine. You are not—” he caught himself, “protoplasmic. Fright and pain and loneliness will never bother you.”
“Nothing bothers me. Where will I find life, and how will I make laughter to fight it?”
The jester was suddenly conscious of the weight of the cube that still hung from his neck. “Let me think for a while,” he said.
After a few minutes he stood up. “If you have a viewer of the kind men use, I can show you how laughter is created. And perhaps I can guide you to a place where life is. By the way, can you cut this cord from my neck? Without hurting me, that is!”
A few weeks later, in the main War Room of Planet A, the somnolence of decades was abruptly shattered. Robots bellowed and buzzed and flashed, and those that were mobile scurried about. In five minutes or so they managed to rouse their human overseers, who hurried about, tightening their belts and stuttering.
“This is a practice alert, isn’t it?” the Officer of the Day kept hoping aloud. “Someone’s running some kind of a test? Someone?” He was beginning to squeak like a berserker himself.
He got down on all fours, removed a panel from the base of the biggest robot and peered inside, hoping to discover something causing a malfunction. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about robotics; recalling this, he replaced the panel and jumped to his feet. He really knew nothing about planet defense, either, and recalling this was enough to send him on a screaming run for help.
So there was no resistance, effective or otherwise. But there was no attack, either.
The forty-mile sphere, unopposed, came down to hover directly above Capital City, low enough for its shadow to send a lot of puzzled birds to nest at noon. Men and birds alike lost many hours of productive work that day; somehow the lost work made less difference than most of the men expected. The days were past when only the grimmest attention to duty let the human race survive on Planet A, though most of the planet did not realize it yet.
“Tell the President to hurry up,” demanded the jester’s image, from a viewscreen in the no-longer somnolent War Room. “Tell him it’s urgent that I talk to him.”
The President, breathing heavily, had just entered. “I am here. I recognize you, and I remember your trial.”
“Odd, so do I.”
“Have you now stooped to treason? Be assured that if you have led a berserker to us you can expect no mercy from your government.”
The image made a forbidden noise, a staccato sound from the open mouth, head thrown back. “Oh, please, mighty President! Even I know our Ministry of Defense is a j-o-k-e, if you will pardon an obscene word. It’s a catchbasin for exiles and incompetents. So I come to offer mercy, not ask it. Also, I have decided to legally take the name of Jester. Kindly continue to apply it to me.”
“We have nothing to say to you!” barked the Minister of Defense. He was purple granite, having entered just in time to hear his Ministry insulted.
“We have no objection to talking to you!” contradicted the President, hastily. Having failed to overawe the Jester through a viewscreen, he could now almost feel the berserker’s weight upon his head.
“Then let us talk,” said Jester’s image. “But not so privately. This is what I want.”
What he wanted, he said, was a face-to-face parley with the Committee, to be broadcast live on planet-wide tridi. He announced that he would come “properly attended” to the conference. And he gave assurance that the berserker was under his full control, though he did not explain how. It, he said, would not start any shooting.
The Minister of Defense was not ready to start anything. But he and his aides hastily made secret plans.
Like almost every other citizen, the presidential candidate of the Liberal party settled himself before a tridi on the fateful evening, to watch the confrontation. He had an air of hopefulness, for any sudden event may bring hope to a political underdog.
Few others on the planet saw anything encouraging in the berserker’s descent, but there was still no mass panic. Berserkers and war were unreal things to the long-isolated people of Planet A.
“Are we ready?” asked the Jester nervously, looking over the mechanical delegation which was about to board a launch with him for the descent to Capital City.
“What you have ordered, I have done,” squeaked the berserker-voice from the shadows above.
“Remember,” Jester cautioned, “the protoplasmic-units down there are much under the influence of life. So ignore whatever they say. Be careful not to hurt them, but outside of that you can improvise within my general plan.”
“All this is in my memory from your previous orders,” said the machine patiently.
“Then let’s go.” Jester straightened his shoulders. “Bring me my cloak!”
The brilliantly lighted interior of Capital City’s great Meeting Hall displayed a kind of rigid, rectilinear beauty. In the center of the Hall there had been placed a long, polished table, flanked on opposing sides by chairs.
Precisely at the appointed time, the watching millions saw one set of entrance doors swing mathematically open. In marched a dozen human heralds, their faces looking almost robotic under bearskin helmets. They halted with a single snap. Their trumpet-tucket rang out clearly.
To the taped strains of Pomp and Circumstance, the President, in the full dignity of his cloak of office, then made his entrance.
He moved at the pace of a man marching to his own execution, but his was the slowness of dignity, not that of fear. The Committee had overruled the purple protestations of the MiniDef, and convinced themselves that the military danger was small. Real berserkers did not ask to parley, they slaughtered. Somehow the Committee could not take the Jester seriously, any more than they could laugh at him. But until they were sure they had him again under their control they would humor him.
The granite-faced Ministers entered in a double file behind the President. It took almost five minutes of Pomp and Circumstance for them all to position themselves .
A launch had been seen to descend from the berserker, and vehicles had rolled from the launch to the Meeting Hall. So it was presumed that Jester was ready, and the cameras pivoted dutifully to face the entrance reserved for him.
Just at the appointed time, the doors of that entrance swung mathematically open, and a dozen man-sized machines entered. They were heralds, for they wore bearskin helmets, and each carried a bright, brassy trumpet.
All but one, who wore a coonskin cap, marched a half-pace out of step, and was armed with a slide trombone.
The mechanical tucket was a faithful copy of the human one—almost. The slide-trombonist faltered at the end, and one long sour note trailed away.
Giving an impression of slow mechanical horror, the berserker-heralds looked at one another. Then one by one their heads turned until all their lenses were focused upon the trombonist.
It—almost it seemed the figure must be he—looked this way and that. Tapped his trombone, as if to clear it of some defect. Paused.
Watching, the President was seized by the first pang of a great horror. In the evidence, there had been a film of an Earthman of ancient time, a balding comic violinist, who had had the skill to pause like that, just pause, and evoke from his filmed audience great gales of . . .
Twice more the robot heralds blew. And twice more the sour note was sounded. When the third attempt failed, the eleven straight-robots looked at one another and nodded agreement.
Then with robotic speed they drew concealed weapons and shot holes in the offender.
All across the planet the dike of tension was cracking, dribbles and spurts of laughter forcing through. The dike began to collapse completely as the trombonist was borne solemnly away by a pair of his fellows, his shattered horn clasped lily-fashion on his iron breast.
