“Christ!” I muttered. “We’ll beat them yet. We’ll beat the block. We’ll beat the heat. We’ll—”
“I must point out to you,” I said, “that I am required by my prime directive to obey state directives which supersede all private commands. I must submit to arrest.”
“Who says it’s a state directive?” Vandaleur said. “Them? Up in that plane?
They’ve got to show credentials. They’ve got to prove it’s state authority before you submit. How d’you know they’re not crooks trying to trick us?'
Holding the wheel with one arm, he reached into his side pocket to make sure the gun was still in place. The car skidded.
The tires squealed on frost and reeds. The wheel was wrenched from his grasp and the car yawed up a small hillock and overturned. The motor roared and the wheels screamed. Vandaleur crawled out and dragged the android with him. For the moment we were outside the cone of light blazing down from the helicopter. We blundered off into the marsh, into the blackness; into concealment. . . Vandaleur running with a pounding heart, hauling the android along.
The helicopter circled and soared over the wrecked car, searchlight peering, loudspeaker braying. On the highway we had left, lights appeared as the pursuing and blocking parties gathered and followed radio directions from the plane. Vandaleur and the android continued deeper and deeper into the marsh, working their way towards the parallel road and safety. It was night by now. The sky was a black matte.
Not a star showed. The temperature was dropping. A southeast night wind knifed us to the bone.
Far behind there was a dull concussion. Vandaleur turned, gasping. The car’s fuel had exploded. A geyser of flame shot up like a lurid fountain. It subsided into a low crater of burning reeds. Whipped by the wind, the distant hem of flame fanned up into- a wall, ten feet high. The wall began marching down on us, crackling fiercely.
Above it, a pall of oily smoke surged forward. Behind it, Vandaleur could make out the figures of men.. a mass of beaters searching the marsh.
“Christ!” I cried and searched desperately for safety. He ran, dragging me with him, until their feet crunched through the surface ice of a pool. He trampled the ice furiously, then flung himself down in the numbing water, pulling the android with us.
The wall of flame approached. I could hear the crackle and feel the heat. He could see the searchers clearly. Vandaleur reached into his side pocket for the gun. The pocket was torn. The gun was gone. He groaned and shook with cold and terror.
The light from the marsh fire was blinding. Overhead, the helicopter floated helplessly to one side, unable to fly through the smoke and flames and aid the searchers, who were beating far to the right of us.
“They’ll miss us,” Vandaleur whispered. “Keep quiet. That’s an order. They’ll miss us. We’ll beat them. We’ll beat the fire. We’ll—”
Three distinct shots sounded less than a hundred feet from the fugitives. Blam!
Blam! Blam! They came from the last three cartridges in my gun as the marsh fire reached it where it had dropped, and exploded the shells. The searchers turned toward the sound and began working directly toward us. Vandaieur cursed hysterically and tried to submerge even deeper to escape the intolerable heat of the fire. The android began to twitch.
The wall of flame surged up to them. Vandaleur took a deep breath and prepared to submerge until the flame passed over them. The android shuddered and suddenly began to scream.
“All reet! All reet!” it shouted. “Be fleet be fleet!”
“Damn you!” I shouted. I tried to drown the android.
“Damn you!” I cursed. I smashed Vandaleur’s face.
The. android battered Vandaleur, who fought it off until it burst out of the mud and staggered upright. Before I could return to the attack, the live flames captured it hypnotically. It danced and capered in a lunatic rumba before the wall of fire.
Its legs twisted. Its arms waved. The fingers writhed in a private rumba of their own. It shrieked and sang and ran in a crooked waltz before the embrace of the heat, a muddy monster silhouetted against the brilliant sparkling flare.
The searchers shouted. There were shots. The android spun around twice and then continued its horrid dance before the face of the flames. There was a rising gust of wind. The fire swept around the capering figure and enveloped it for a roaring moment. Then the fire swept on, leaving behind it a sobbing mass of synthetic flesh oozing scarlet blood that would never coagulate.
The thermometer would have registered 1200° wondrously Fahrenheit.
Vandaleur didn’t die. I got away. They missed him while they watched the android caper and die. But I don’t know which of us he is these days. Psychotic projection, Wanda warned me. Projection, Nan Webb told him. If you live with a crazy machine long enough, I become crazy too. Reet!
But we know the truth. We know that they were wrong. It was the other way around. It was the man that was corrupting the machine... . . any machine... . . all machines. The new robot and Vandaleur know that because the new robot’s started twitching too. Reet!
Here on cold Pollux, the robot is twitching and singing. No heat, but my fingers writhe. No heat, but it’s taken the little Talley girl off for a solitary walk. A cheap labor robot. . . A servo-mechanism. . . all I could afford.. . but it’s twitching and humming and walking alone with the child somewhere and I can’t fmd them. Christ!
Vandaleur can’t fmd me before it’s too late. Cool and discreet, honey, in the dancing frost while the thermometer registers 10° fondly Fahrenheit.
The attendant at the car lot was daydreaming when I pulled up—a big, lazy-looking man in black satin checkered down the front. I was wearing scarlet, myself; it suited my mood. I got out, almost on his toes.
“Park or storage?” he asked automatically, turning around. Then he realized who I was, and ducked his head away.
“Neither,” I told him.
There was a hand torch on a shelf in the repair shed right behind him. I got it and came back. I kneeled down to where I could reach behind the front wheel, and ignited the torch. I turned it on the axle and suspension. They glowed cherry red, then white, and fused together. Then I got up and turned the flame on both tires until the rubberoid stank and sizzled and melted down to the pavement. The attendant didn’t say anything.
I left him there, looking at the mess on his nice clean concrete.
It had been a nice car, too, but I could get another any time. And I felt like walking. I went down the winding road, sleepy in the afternoon sunlight, dappled with shade and smelling of cool leaves. You couldn’t see the houses; they were all sunken or hidden by shrubbery, or a little of both. That was the fad I’d heard about; it was what I’d come here to see. Not that anything the dulls did would be worth looking at.
I turned off at random and crossed a rolling lawn, went through a second hedge of hawthorn in blossom, and came out next to a big sunken games court.
The tennis net was up, and two couples were going at it, just working up a little sweat—young, about half my age, all four of them. Three dark-haired, one blonde.
They were evenly matched, and both couples played well together; they were enjoying themselves.
I watched for a minute. But by then the nearest two were beginning to sense I was there, anyhow. I walked down onto the court, just as the blonde was about to serve.
She looked at me frozen across the net, poised on tiptoe. The others stood.
“Off,” I told them. “Game’s over.”
I watched the blonde. She was not especially pretty, as they go, but compactly and gracefully put together. She came down slowly, flatfooted without awkwardness, and tucked the racquet under her arm; then the surprise was over and she was trotting off the court after the other three.
I followed their voices around the curve of the path, between towering masses of lilacs, inhaling the sweetness, until I came to what looked like a little sunning spot.
There was a sundial and a birdbath and towels lying around on the grass. One couple, the dark-haired pair, was still in sight farther down the path, heads bobbing along.
